


Touchy

by PoisonJack



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Cockblocking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exhibitionism, Exposition, Feelings, Frottage, General au, Happy Ending, Intercrural Sex, Jack is vain AND insecure, Jack thinks he's clever getting his hands on tim but tim knows whats going on, Kind of haha, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Narcissism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Rhys is Handsome Jack's Personal Assistant, Self-Loathing, Sexual Frustration, Sexual Tension, Sloppy Seconds, Spontaneous Orgasm, Tim is a man who likes having options, double-handjobs, handjobs, some morally grey area, these guys are dirty and its great, touching under false pretenses hahaha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonJack/pseuds/PoisonJack
Summary: Wearing a mask of your own face is clearly the mark of insecurity, no matter how Jack has successfully framed it into company propaganda. The overconfident swagger andhandsomemoniker are just part of his insecurity about how his true face really looks. Little does he know, his fanboy PA and his body double thirst after him hard just the same.Prompt:Jackothy (though if you want to add Rhys I won’t complain 👀): After having his face scarred, Jack realizes the only way he can see and feel his own face again is if he goes to see Tim. The other doppelgängers use tech which isn’t the same, who knows what they look like underneath? And Tim is... oddly ok with that (not at first tho; Jack was annoying. Still is but it’s oddly charming now) He spent his whole life being overlooked, and Jack focused solely on him is intense... basically Timtam gets a little too heated when Jack looks at and touches his face. Timthirsts.Sub in Jack's mask and whole corporate image being obnoxiously everywhere for being the story equivalent of 'dudebros in HUGE trucks usually have small dicks', and you'll see where Jack's whole being is coming from haha :D
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands), Handsome Jack/Timothy Lawrence, Handsome Jack/Timothy Lawrence/Rhys, Jackothy - Relationship, Rhack - Relationship, Rhysothy - Relationship, rhackothy - Relationship
Comments: 38
Kudos: 229





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my dear patron, thank you for this prompt because i am having a serious blast exploring this incarnation of Jack in my ot3 >:D I'm not sure if this will be two or _three_ chapters (I know I tend to get very wordy and overly long when im having fun hehe) but for now, we have a start! :) 
> 
> The rest will hopefully be up soon. I'm super sick and weak right now, and while taking medicine is good, i can't think straight on it x_x hahah please bear with me! We doin' this thing with smut and feels!

Handsome Jack was many things. 

A hero, in short, opener of vaults and defeater of monsters, and CEO of the most powerful company in the galaxy. 

And the price of that power had been his face.

Sure, Jack tried to buy into his own propaganda as much as he expected his employees to, but he couldn’t _really_ lie to himself, even if he desperately wanted to. The ironic fact that he’d fashioned himself a mask _of his own face_ wasn’t lost on him, but denial was a powerful thing.

He was scarred, disfigured with an injury which refused any kind of correction be it medical, scientific, or bordering on alien technology. The mask had been the _logical_ next-step to try to regain some semblance of what he’d lost, and for a time, the power and re-branding that came with seizing an empire for his own was a good distraction.

He’d tried. _Oh_ how he’d tried. 

Every day that he looked in the mirror, mask or no, it bothered him just a little bit more until he couldn’t just ignore it. The mask began to overwrite his memories of his true features, making him panic in need of removal, only to have his ruined, panicked face stare back at him from the bathroom mirror.

The mask _functioned_ as his face, but it just _wasn’t._ And without it, he _still_ didn’t _look_ like himself; not as he truly remembered. The damage his face had sustained did more than just wound his vanity. The deep fissure of old scar tissue bothered him sometimes if he stubbornly left the mask on for too long, and without that technologically-superior second-skin, he was almost totally blind in his left eye. Forgetting his face made him fear he was forgetting himself, and _Handsome_ Jack the CEO of Hyperion wasn’t afraid of _anything._

The logical next-step to quell the fear of ignominy was quite clear.

“Rhysie?” Jack spoke up, startling his personal assistant from whatever he’d been doing at his desk as he looked at the younger man. “Call up Timothy for me, would ya kitten? It’s about time for a quality-check. Make sure he’s still on-brand. And by on-brand, I mean _me_. Heh, get it? Because he’s me; Mr. Hyperion.”

Rhys gave Jack a depreciating moue. “If you’re going to say something about him being _on_ you, or _you_ being on _me_ , or vice-versa, don’t bother. You’ve made that joke before,” Rhys snarked back, the snort Jack gave making the PA grin despite himself. “Get some new material, first.”

“Look at you, thinkin’ you’ve got me figured out,” Jack teased. “What color underwear am I wearing today, cupcake?”

“I’m surprised you even _know_ about underwear, Jack.”

Two for two. It made the CEO genuinely grin. 

Rhys was a good little assistant. Even if his creepy fanboy-gazes had _eventually_ stopped after a few months of working for him, he still blushed when Jack brazenly flirted with him, though the older man never took it too far. Rhys was efficient, and despite Jack’s teasing, he _did_ know the older man better than any past secretary or other idiot that couldn’t carry out Jack’s iron will the way he wanted. 

Jack had gone through… a _lot_ of personal assistants. The ones that had nervous breakdowns were one thing. The incompetant ones he certainly didn’t miss, but a couple had at least been amusing until Jack had had to airlock them.

And then came Rhys. The younger man wasn’t just good at his job, but he was one of a very few people to act _normal_ around the older man despite his obvious hero-worship; to tease him back and roll his eyes at Jack’s too-sweet coffee-orders, and laugh at his dirty jokes, or come right back with ones to challenge them.

Jack knew it said a _lot_ about _him_ that he enjoyed an (ex)-creepy fanboy as the one to handle the personal details of his day, but he also felt just a little bolstered by the fact that Rhys still flushed pink sometimes over some of his more creative innuendos, despite the back-talk and rolled eyes. It reminded him that even after years of wearing the mask-- of no one seeing his _true_ face- that he could still make a pretty, leggy PA blush. _Despite_ the fact his face wasn’t exactly a _face._

He was insecure. He was vain. 

He _knew_ he was vain, but the choice to rebrand himself after the branding-incident was wrought from insecurity above anything else, and he lied to himself about _that_ as well. He changed his name to reflect what he wanted to believe: _Handsome_ Jack. That he came into this world good-looking-- _and so help him god-_ he wouldn’t let current-circumstances let anyone forget that fact.

Reminding _himself,_ however, was where Tim came in.

“Tim is still on Elpis finishing that… _thing_ ,” Rhys informed with a slight, distasteful raise of his pouty lips. “When did you want me to set it up?”

“That _thing_ ,” Jack began, ignoring Rhys’ question to grin a little, “is going to make me even more stinkin’ rich than I already am, kiddo.” Rhys gave him a further-displeased look. “Oh come _on_ , you _liked_ the idea of eternal youth.”

“Spreading some Shuggurath-derived _wrinkle cream_ on your face isn’t the same thing as eternal youth, Jack.”

The CEO didn’t miss a beat, and didn’t allow himself to dwell on the subtext Rhys didn’t even know he was on to. “It won’t just be the face, kitten. My scientists are gonna make it work on _everything_.” The regenerative-properties the creatures had were promising, according to the eggheads in R&D. Jack shot him a smirk. “Balls, too.”

“ _Gross.”_

“What, you some _too-good-for-nice-smooth-balls_ type?” Jack gave an exaggerated look over his desk. “ _You_?”

Rhys put his face in his flesh hand. “I’m more disturbed by the fact you’ve got Tim out there _milking_ them, Jack.”

“I was just being nice saying _that_.” Jack’s grin grew. “He’s not _milking_ them for the compound so much as--”

“ _Aaaaand_ file that under things I definitely do not need to know about before lunch,” Rhys quickly interrupted, ignoring the older man’s grin and murmuring about ‘protein’ strands and regenerative ‘slimes’. “When do you want me to have him come up once it’s done?”

Jack knew _exactly_ when he wanted Tim here: after-hours in private once Rhys had already left for the day. 

He needed this. He needed it badly and couldn’t hold off any longer. 

It had been over a month since Jack’s last ‘quality check’, and while Tim submitted to them without issue, too many _not_ -between-missions-checks might raise the double’s suspicions as to what Jack was _really_ doing. Looking at photos of the double were one thing (and good to help him hold out against the fear of losing himself in his mind’s eye), but it wasn’t the same as _touching_ the planes of your ‘own’ face. 

Good thing Tim was on a relatively-safe job collecting samples from the otherwise-dangerous creatures; Jack would be able to look and feel to his heart’s content under the guise of genuine quality-control when he knew there wasn’t a threat at all.

“That job’s almost finished though, right?” Jack asked conversationally. “Day after tomorrow? Did Timtams send you an update?”

Rhys’ lips pulled thin. “Yes. And he sent _pictures,_ too.” Pictures Rhys honestly didn’t need to see, though Tim’s comments on each one were funny at least. The one the annoyed-double had sent of himself covered in… Well, Rhys wasn’t sure Shugguraths _had_ entrails, but the caption of ‘Hyperion Beauty Cream coming to a store near you!’ made the image amusing at least.

It was still a gross assignment though.

Jack grinned at Rhys’ sour look. “Heh, neat. Send those to my comm, wouldja sugarplum?” 

“If you have nightmares, it’s not my fault,” Rhys warned as he did as Jack asked. “There. Sent. _Ew.”_

“You could always send me some _nicer_ pictures to give me sweet dreams, Rhysie,” Jack purred, teasing a bit even as his heart rate spiked at his PA’s words. Rhys just rolled his eyes with a little blush and a muttered “buy me dinner first” which made Jack relax a bit through a smirk. 

There was no way Rhys could _know_ what was going on in Jack’s head-- his words were coincidence was all, and Jack knew he was getting paranoid again- but the promise of his double’s return from Elpis was a relief that kept his worries carefully contained.

 _No one_ knew what was going on in his head. No one knew that Handsome Jack-- most powerful man in the whole goddamn galaxy _who put the word ‘handsome’ into his own name_ \- suffered from poor self-image. And no one would, as far as Jack could help it.

Hell, no one would _believe_ that at any rate, either, which Jack was immensely grateful to his PR team about. 

He was just tired. Stressed. Seeing Tim would help matters. _Feeling_ him would help a lot more.

The taunting nightmares were keeping him from restful sleep; looking into a dream-mirror to pull off his mask only for nothing to be beneath it but a horrifying blankness, and in the dream (and sometimes still once awake) Jack really _couldn’t_ recall what his face had once looked like. Putting his actual hands on his double would soothe his psyche a great deal, the tactile-sensation further embedding the shape and feel and _perfection_ of Tim’s own face back into Jack’s subconscious.

Rhys set up the meeting, and now all Jack had to do was wait.

\--

It hadn’t been easy to _not_ watch the clock, or to keep his foot from tapping anxiously under his desk days later, but once Rhys had packed up-- asking multiple times if Jack would like him to stay- the CEO was pacing the space behind his big desk waiting for Tim’s return.

Elpis loomed outside the large window, it’s pink glimmer lending an ethereal-quality to Jack’s office as Rhys got the main-lights as he’d left. Only the light on Jack’s desk remained on, the rest of the office bathed in Elpis’ glow. To think he’d once wanted to crack the proto-planet like egg, only for it to be key to his recovery.

The Shuggurath research was _extremely_ promising. That the creatures could generate _other_ creatures-- not that Rathyds were particularly useful themselves; moon-Rakks, Jack called them- lead down some _very_ interesting paths. 

Rathyds shared a _few_ qualities with the Shuggaraths that spawned them, but genetically they were _different_ creatures. Shuggaraths bred just like anything else to create more Shuggaraths, but the fact they were capable of creating a second, _unique_ animal held implications which got Jack _very_ excited indeed.

The skin that was scarred by Eridian-technology refused _any_ attempts to change it, while minor nicks and cuts that Jack got while shaving around the thing healed back up just fine. By his own observations (and tests several techs did before he airlocked them for what they saw) his normal skin was fine and unaffected by the depth of the brand, while the scar itself was… _different._

 _Genetically_ different, but still a part of _him._

Jack believed that the weird moon-dwelling animals were key to healing his face. Whatever protein or enzyme or _slimey_ bits that they contained _might_ be able to rewrite the damaged cells and reverse the scarring, or at the very least, minimize it to not _need_ the mask anymore. The ugly, bulbous creatures created much more elegantly-designed animals somehow, and if _that_ was possible, then maybe it could be applied to himself as well.

He could be normal again. Be _handsome_ again, _without_ the necessary moniker. 

Until that happened though, Jack had Tim to get by, and he was antsy as ever to see the younger man.

“Did you forget to pay the power bill?”

Jack spun around on his heel, a grin on his face even though he’d been taken by surprise from hopeful, antsy thoughts. “Timmy! There’s my favorite double! Flip ‘em back on, wouldja kiddo?”

Tim rolled his eyes, but he had a smile on his face as he did just that, and crossed the office towards Jack’s desk. His mission had gone well, and he’d brought back more than enough samples to last quite some time. The confidence he felt over it was all over his face; especially from the _lack_ of injury he’d come back with this time. “I think you’re gonna be impressed.”

“That so?” Jack said with a raise of his brow, impatience over wanting to get his hands on the other man’s face kept carefully tramped down. “How’s that gorgeous face, kiddo?”

“I’m more worried about my jacket,” Tim responded with a sour look. There had been… a _lot_ of slime. “Did Rhys show you the pictures?”

“Not the ones I _wanted_ to see,” Jack said with an implicit smirk, forcing himself to walk slowly towards the double as Tim climbed the steps to the dais Jack’s desk was on. His eagerness wasn’t something he wanted to showcase. 

“Of Rhys, or of me?” Tim joked right back, grinning at Jack’s surprised bark of laughter.

“Cute, Timtam. _Real_ cute.” Tim smirked unapologetically, and Jack knew well the mischievous look on the double’s face. So Tim was in a playful mood, then. The mission must’ve gone very well indeed. That was beyond excellent. “You feel free to send me whatever pics you feel like, handsome. I’m a _big_ fan of close-ups.” The smile on Jack’s face was genuine, even if he was dying to get his hands on the body double. “Remind me to give you a raise, too.”

“Add that to the extra vacation days you _also_ said you’d give me.”

Jack grinned as they stood before one-another. Tim was giving him a doubtful, accusing tilt of the head, and Jack’s fingers itched so badly to rove over Tim’s face that he didn’t even bother teasing the younger man. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He raised his hands to Tim’s face, the double patiently waiting for Jack to remove the mask himself. It was something the older man insisted upon-- part of the nightmare he badly needed to address- to remove the mask and find no damage beneath. “Echo Rhysie about it. Now let’s see that gorgeous face.”

Jack tried to keep his fingers steady as he reached for the double’s face, and Tim waited far more eagerly than he wanted to appear.

Tim didn’t necessarily care for these ‘brand-checks’ at first. Jack already demanded most of his time, and what little free time he _did_ have, he didn’t want to waste on his boss making sure he still “looked right”.

Pfft, as if Tim wasn’t a _professional._

Tim wasn’t exactly vain himself, but he _did_ take pride in his acting skills, and _no one_ was a better Jack than him. That was just a _fact_. Because there _were_ no other Jacks like _him._ None who’d undergone extensive plastic surgery, modulator-implants, and actually fought _side-by-side_ with the CEO _before_ he was the CEO. Tim might not have been much pre-surgery, but Jack had seen his potential, and Tim had risen to all expectations. And he was proud of that.

None of the other doubles _knew_ Jack the way Tim did, either, not to mention _actually_ looked like him. The others used tech which was fully reversible. What _he_ did was an _art_ , regardless of his personal feelings on the matter. 

So needing to be checked if he was ‘on-brand’ was insulting to his professionalism at first, and annoying at best, even if it was always the same. Jack’s scrutiny had made him uncomfortable, as if Tim could lose everything he’d managed to gain after being overlooked for so long in his life. And Tim hadn’t liked it.

He liked it _now._

Jack had nice hands. He’d know. It wasn’t an awful thing to be so casually handled by him, and regardless of how long he’d known Jack now, the intense focus of such a powerful man always got his heart beating just a bit faster. 

Jack’s hands were expert in the removal of Tim’s own mask, the CEO undoing the clasps before setting the material down on his desk. His attention came back to Tim, and at that moment the double watched him carefully for the change that would occur in the older man during the reveal. 

Jack was… _different_ during these checks, but not necessarily in a bad way.

He always took a moment after the mask was fully removed-- eyes darting about Tim’s face as if to check that everything was still there- before a sort of almost _relief_ settled into the older man’s eyes. And then came Tim’s favorite part: the quirk of Jack’s lips as the man cupped both his cheeks in his large, warm hands, and firmly brushed his thumbs over Tim’s cheeks. 

Tim used to blush heavily when Jack had first started demanding these checks. The intensity of the CEO’s focus had made poor Tim go entirely red in the face, and he had trouble meeting Jack’s eyes the first few times. Jack’s hands were always surprisingly gentle if not firm on him, the _inspection_ a lot more like a full face massage than anything else. The touches and traces of fingers and thumbs over the bridge of his nose, under his left eye, the bottom of his cheeks, all made Tim _want._

They hadn’t at first, though. Tim was observant, and the simple fact alone that Jack wanted to inspect _under_ the mask-- where no one else ever saw anyways so what would it matter if he had some blemish or something?- made him _think._

Tim wondered sometimes if Jack ever forgot that he knew what the CEO _really_ looked like under the mask, or if he thought Tim might be repelled by it, and thus hid what Tim suspected were the true reasons for checking. The double had his own suspicions on what Jack was _really_ doing. 

He’d _been_ there when Jack had been branded. It made an impression on him for multiple reasons: the way Jack handled the pain; the visceral reaction to seeing-- essentially- _himself_ be branded, skin ruined and blistered. The way Jack was still somehow strong after the fact and overcame it all. Yeah, Tim had changed his entire _being_ into someone else, but it had been more or less voluntary, and wholly expected. What Jack went through… 

Well.

Tim had been there for it and he _still_ couldn’t imagine going through that himself. Not without totally breaking. Him and Jack maybe butted heads sometimes but he admired the hell out of the older man, and even a bit more than that.

It was _part_ of the reason he submitted to these examinations. There was something pitiful and desperate and utterly human in the way Jack’s thumbs sometimes slid up his cheekbones, palms sliding down to turn his chin this way and that between his big hands. Jack might’ve poked fun about telling him not to break _Jack’s_ investment in ‘his’ face, but there was something a little too real behind his concern. It made Tim ache for the Jack he knew right before the man was betrayed. He _knew_ what the scarring looked like, but such superficial things, _ironically_ , didn’t matter to the double. 

Tim tilted his head as Jack’s thumb slid down the side of his neck, hoping the older man wouldn’t register the hard thump of his heart, and then Jack breathed out in clear relief before letting Tim go. He tried to hide his disappointment that it was over already.

Tim’s voice wasn’t as confident as he would’ve preferred, but he kept the excited tremor from it, at least. “Everything still in one piece?” he joked as Jack looked at him a few moments more.

The CEO raised a brow, cocky-smile back in place. “Why, got something more interesting to show me, Timtam?” He waggled his brows in what was clear tease as Tim rolled his eyes. 

“I only got a _little_ electrocuted, and nowhere interesting,” the double replied.

Jack didn’t miss the slight pinkness to Tim’s actual cheeks (the sight was going to be in his dreams tonight for its rareness, that much he was certain) but the older man didn’t comment on it. “Interesting for _you_ , or interesting for _me_?” He gave the double a wink.

Tim felt his heart thump hard in his chest, deciding to play a little with the older man in lieu of getting to truly indulge; Jack flirted with _everyone_. It didn’t mean it was real, or that he meant it. Tim still liked it, though. “I’m not stripping to let you find out. It’s cold in here.”

Jack snorted and retrieved the mask from his desk. “You can always send me pictures. Don’t forget about that!” Jack handed the mask back to Tim. He never liked putting the mask back on the double himself, and Tim never questioned it. It was something he preferred to watch Tim do; something his subconscious would have to reconcile as an active choice to cover his unharmed face.

“There would have to _be_ pictures for me to even _send_ ,” Tim muttered as he put things back in place.

“I like your thinking, pumpkin! Let me know if you need any inspiration.” 

Tim snorted but left on his way as Jack shooed him out. 

The CEO collapsed into his chair once the office was again left in Elpis’ pink glow. He felt more relaxed than he had all month, and with the relief of Tim’s visit finally washed over him, he knew he was going to get a very good night’s sleep indeed.

He wasn’t even mad that he didn’t have any dirty dreams that night, instead happy to sleep like the dead.

He’d need to take advantage of all the rest he could get now, before the shame of his true face caught back up to him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This felt like nothing but exposition aaaaaagh x_x We'll get to more fun shit next chapter I promise ;D
> 
> [Shuggaraths](https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Shuggurath_\(enemy\)) are the gross-looking weird floating thingers in The Pre-Sequel that spawn [Raythds](https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Rathyd), that are essentially moon-Rakks, for those who haven't played TPS yet :) i haven't even finished one play through yet; i find the moon tedious but boy do i love playing as Tim AHAHAH
> 
> [my tumblr](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/) | [my fic masterlist archive](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/post/134979026515/a-ao3-fic-archive) | [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PurgeThatUrge)
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! ao3 FAQ: [Can I post comments anonymously, or if I don't have an Archive account? ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/comments-and-kudos?language_id=en#anoncomment)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim is horny on main send reinforcements xD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this perspective-switches a few times, but it’s all a balancing act! I really hope it doesn't throw anyone too hard. I strive to make that sort of shift as natural as possible so it flows, and that gets _very_ interesting when writing a threeway too mwehehe >:D 
> 
> These guys all got the same goals but they've all got their own issues too :3

“What do you _mean_ there was a ‘ _little_ problem?” 

Rhys watched from his desk as Jack sneered into his comm, angry voice deceptively placid as the conversation went from bad to worse. The PA wisely cancelled the accounting-meeting for today for next quarter’s budget, silently rescheduling as he could hear Jack’s fingers trilling on his desk as the CEO _patiently_ listened to the other end of the call. 

Rhys pushed the meeting back a full week.

“And just _who_ is responsible for letting our atmosphere into the sample jars?” Jack stood from his desk and began to slowly, slowly pace behind his chair. He made a threatening noise before readdressing the researcher on the other end. “Then I’ve got _just_ the volunteers to get new samples by the end of the weekend, or I don’t think I need to _tell you_ what will happen… Better yet, maybe _knowing_ you’ll be volunteered to the gene-splicing team _if you fail_ is a little motivation for your ‘ _little_ ’ problem, hm?”

Jack ended the call with an urge to throw his comm into the far wall, but tossed it to his desk instead. He dropped himself into his chair with an angry growl and huff, pulling up his calendar and checking how this screw-up was going to push back the speed with which tests were being made and samples _done_. He didn’t want to wait any longer than absolutely necessary.

It had been a few days since Tim had returned from Elpis, prototype serums cooking away and at the vital stage for moon-fresh samples to repeat the process, and Jack was _already_ getting antsy about trying the new regenerative cream on _himself._ Yeah yeah, that’s what they had _volunteers_ for, but Jack wanted to know _immediately_ if it worked. He’d tried enough things to fix his damn scarring that this would either do something right away, or it _wouldn’t_ , and he could stop thinking about the project immediately; plan some next mission for Tim.

It was far too soon to call Tim back up for a quality check-- let alone come up with a _reason_ for one- just to reassure himself. Tim would figure out what was really going on if he sent him on some stupid rakk chase. But he didn’t want the double in genuine-harm’s way either. He just… wanted to feel his double’s face; where there was no scar over the other man’s brow ruining his vision. He wanted to see that dopey smile Tim got when he stroked his cheek; an expression Jack himself couldn’t make no matter how hard he tried. 

He liked it when Tim looked at him like that. Tim knew what was under the mask-- under _Jack’s_ mask specifically- but he could still look at him like _that._

It made Jack angry to use Tim as a crutch for his own damaged psyche, and further, _privately_ angry that he lacked the self-control to do otherwise. It _worked_ though, and it would need to _keep_ working until his scientists came up with something to reverse the damage. 

He just wanted some peace of mind. He just wanted to feel _normal_ again. ...Still be _obscenely-rich_ , of course, he didn’t wanna change that, but feel as normal as anyone else _not_ walking around with a mask of their own freakin’ face on their face. 

Rhys was talking to him, and Jack looked up from his reverie with a thinking frown as the younger man repeated himself again with clear concern. “...anything I could get you? More coffee?”

Jack leaned back in his chair with slight hopelessness. Coffee might be a good idea. “You don’t got a biochemical degree up your sleeve, do ya Rhysie?”

“I could check,” the PA said with a smirk that made Jack grin. Rhys tempered his smile into something more serious. “So what was that about?”

Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. “Those science dumbasses contaminated more than _half_ the frikkin’ Shuggarath samples with stupid _lab_ air. Ruined ‘em. _Everything’s_ gone bad. And that means these jackasses slowed down the second-stage for the cream.” 

“...the ‘smooth-ball’ cream?” Rhys tried with a crooked, awkward grin, and it succeeded in making Jack snort. “I know he wouldn’t like it, but Tim could probably get you more samples, right?” he suggested hopefully, trying to improve the older man’s mood. “I mean… if smooth-balls are that important to you, Jack,” he teased.

“...I promised him time off after he got back,” Jack grumbled, irked he’d effectively locked himself out of sending Tim on any missions for a while. Tim deserved it, yeah, but damn sometimes it sucked being the hero. “Those nerds can collect their own samples.” 

Jack muttered to himself about being surrounded by morons. His fingers twitched against the armrest of his chair. Angry energy with no outlet.

Rhys frowned down at the CEO, and brought up Jack’s schedule display in the palm of his cybernetic hand. He selected a few different submenus with his echoeye and gave Jack an encouraging smile. “Weapons sent up a progress report about the new grenade modifications. I scheduled a check with them for later this evening, but I could bump it up if you wanted, Jack.”

 _That_ got a genuine smile out of the CEO, and he sat up in his chair a little straighter. A little destruction sounded good, actually. He could let off some steam and show off for his leggy PA at the same time. He could do this. He just had to be… _patient._

As long as he had Rhys to fill his schedule with distractions, he could at _least_ wait out Tim’s vacation days before sending the double on some errand. This was just a minor setback in R&D. When did things _ever_ go off according to schedule, no matter how much he threatened them? That floor was full of weirdos, but they _were_ brilliant, and most importantly, they _did_ get _results._

He could wait it out. He was Handsome Jack. He could do anything.

Right now, he wanted to blow something up. “Move it on up, buttercup. And order some _live_ targets, too. Threshers and shit. Let’s really test things out.”

\--

This time-off was driving Tim _nuts._

He’d been looking for some excuse to make Jack warrant another ‘quality check’ on him for what could now be defined as _weeks_ , and he was annoyed with himself for how pathetic he was in coming up with nothing, let alone obsessing about it. Weeks in which he was supposed to be enjoying much-desired time-off, resting and relaxing instead of being shot-at or chased by something that may or may not want to eat him.

He was endlessly winding himself up by replaying the last time Jack had held his face between his hands and looked into his eyes in what had definitely felt like something _possessive._

Tim couldn’t get it out of his head, and wondered if he maybe hadn’t lost a few brain cells somewhere between Elpis and Jack’s office to be so fixated. Maybe this last time had been the last straw for Tim’s little crush on his boss.

There was just this _feeling_ about the whole experience itself. Something about the welcome warmth of hands against his space-chilled skin from the last few days he’d spent on Elpis. Or the glow of the office, maybe-- _Tim was a romantic at heart;_ it had definitely set a mood- or something in the unhurried touches as Jack _really_ checked him out. 

That evening refused to peel itself from his mind. Jack had been thorough and methodical in his touches, but they were no less gentle or unsure for it. Tim had felt like Jack had been desperate to touch him, and in noticing that, Tim couldn’t leave it alone. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he’d been through these little inspections so many times now that if this one had felt different, it’s probably because it _was._

Tim needed to be sure. Needed it to happen again. He hadn’t wanted something this badly in a long time, and up until now he hadn’t been confident enough to attempt anything that might result in him getting laughed at instead. But frustration was a powerful force, and Tim found himself _scheming,_ daydreaming about what he’d _like_ to happen as if to bolster his own courage to make some move.

The ideas he came up with were titillating and gratifying both, and it was _very_ easy to actually visualize his fantasies if he just pretended his hands were the CEO’s own. 

Tim liked to think about what that said about the man in the _bedroom_ ; the gentle firmness Jack handled him with especially when he _did_ come back with some new injury or something. Jack was known for his violent-streak with idiots and enemies both, but the way he’d stroked Tim’s cheek, or how he was always careful not to pinch skin on those damn clasps on his face… Tim needed to know.

He wanted Jack to touch him again, but experience it through this new lens of appreciation. It would be worth the visceral experience of it all in pretending Jack was caressing him like a lover... 

_Or_ he’d end up popping a boner and Jack would probably laugh at him, but he found the risk to be acceptable.

Wanting was turning into _needing_ , and the double was getting desperate for some excuse to have Jack’s undivided attention (and hands) back on him. Touching himself on opposite sides-- pretending it was Jack’s own hand just to recapture some bit of the experience- was a poor substitute for what he actually wanted. 

The actions left him red-faced and embarrassed of himself, but he still jerked off the incorrigible hardon the fantasy left him with, and a few more times after _that,_ too. It was satisfying enough until it _wasn’t._

Tim wanted _more._

His fantasies and vacation-turned-cabin-fever had him dialing up the private number to Jack’s personal comm before he could stop himself. He still had a few more days left, but if this was how he wanted to spend his vacation, then no one could judge him.

“ _Hooo_ mid-afternoon on your vacation, huh? Bored already? Is this some new type of booty call?” 

Tim rolled his eyes and judged his cock for the jolt of interest at the tacky way Jack answered his call. He half wanted to just say ‘yes’ to the assumption to hear what Jack would say. “I think my freckles are coming back,” he stated instead.

Jack’s voice paused in its enthusiastic greeting on the comm. “...say what now?”

“My _freckles_ ,” Tim spoke into his comm, face heating just a bit at the forceful annoyance he stuck into the lie as if to prove how much they _bugged_ him, “they’re coming back.” He could feel his heart beat in his throat, listening as Jack made some remark under his breath.

Tim kept his mind on the prize: he wanted those hands to cup his face and trace his lips, that cocky grin Tim himself perfected aimed his way. He wanted those hands to cup his throat, thumbs over his adam’s apple and thrumming pulse. Jack would probably make some crude remark about how eager Tim was, and Tim wouldn’t even deny it. _More_ than eager, he’d agree, and encourage the older man’s hands any and everywhere else.

Jack’s voice hummed on the comm a moment before speaking. “...I’ve got an _‘urgent’_ meeting later,” Jack reported sarcastically, “but this is _way_ more important. Like, emergency, probably. Get that sculpted-butt up here.” 

Tim could hear Rhys’ voice chastising Jack for putting off the meeting with the shareholders _again_ , but couldn’t make himself feel bad about it as he ended the call. He’d buy Rhys lunch or something to make up for messing with Jack’s schedule. Maybe parlay that into dinner or more if he felt brave enough. He’d flirted with the CEO’s personal assistant more than a few times himself, but never too overtly. It wasn’t bad to have a backup plan, though.

Rhys had… been _fun_ to get to know when Jack had hired him on ages ago. Especially when Jack deemed it necessary for his PA to know of his double’s existence, and not just pull a fast one when Jack didn’t feel like coming in to work. Rhys had been expectedly-flustered, but any initial discomfort _or_ excitement over the body double (something Tim usually came to expect with these sorts of introductions) eventually evened out into easy camaraderie.

There had been a few times Tim had considered using his ‘Jack-powers’ on the cybernetic man, seeing the way Rhys looked at Jack _and_ him both. He’d have to be blind not to notice it. There were pornos with look-alikes in them that started just like this-- Tim would know- but he’d never really gone for it out of some weird sense of betrayal towards Jack.

Jack had never forbidden it, but Tim saw the way Jack’s eyes sometimes lingered on the cybernetic man, too. Rhys was way better than any of the other secretaries Tim had had to deal with, and he was seriously gorgeous too. Tim was certain that had helped him secure his place as Jack’s personal assistant, but his dedication to his job is what _kept_ him there. Jack had some _serious_ self-control where some of those pouts were concerned, because if Rhys was featuring in _his_ dirty fantasies, he was certain he was also in Jack’s.

They’d _both_ like a bite out of that cupcake. He wondered if it was by some stretch of professionalism that Jack _didn’t_ already sleep with Rhys. 

He hoped the same didn’t apply to him. For either man.

\--

Rhys was _coincidentally_ absent when Tim showed, on some errand or another for Jack as the older man smirked. Tim strode confidently up to his desk, feeling like he wasn’t the only one getting some sort of thrill out of this impromptu-check. It hadn’t been _too_ long since Jack had last inspected him, but the energy surrounding this time definitely felt different as well.

It wasn’t after hours, for one thing. For another, Jack seemed in a relatively good mood to see him despite the obvious ‘image infraction’ or whatever. Tim didn’t think he’d overly hurried up here, but there was a definite charge in his step.

Jack patted the top of his desk in an indication Tim should sit. The double raised a brow, and Jack rolled his eyes. “Pop that perfect butt right here, handsome. Gonna need my desk light. Your freckles were always too light.” 

Tim shrugged easily enough but told his excitedly-beating heart to calm the hell down. _This_ was new. And Jack remembered what Tim’s freckles even looked like? Not that he’d ever gotten enough sun to make them stand out more. But the fact that Jack even _remembered_ made something inside him that much more excited as Jack impatiently patted the desk again, and Tim hopped up with more eagerness than dignity. 

“Just how many of these guys are we talkin’?” Jack asked as his eyes darted about what skin the mask didn’t fully cover. He aimed his desk light in show. The office was already bright enough. “I’m gonna need to have a few words with your surgeons if they lied to me about warranty-date…”

Tim snorted at the idea. He’d had this face for years already, and while the guarantee for ‘freckle cover’ probably wasn’t standard as far as medical procedures went, it was as good an excuse for any reason to make Jack really check him over. “I saw a few the other day, but forgot about ‘em ‘til recently,” Tim affirmed in his most honest voice he could muster. “Uh, vacation-brain. I just remembered today.”

“Mm,” Jack murmured as he went about removing Tim’s mask, hands on either side of his face and thumbs swiping over the material before exposing his real-skin to the air. Jack set it on the desk and took his chin gently between thumb and forefinger. His eyes danced about Tim’s face as the double excitedly let his little fantasies play in the backdrop of his mind. “Where am I looking in particular, Timmy?”

“Around,” Tim quickly deflected, Jack’s eyes darting to his a moment before putting his attention back on other areas of the double’s face. “I was busy doing other stuff but I remembered from uh, _before_ , so I gave you a call. It was a _few_ spots, though.”

Jack tilted Tim’s head to the side, eyes high on his cheekbones as he focused. The older man had pretty much insinuated himself between Tim’s legs, and in all the years of working together, Tim couldn’t remember such a time Jack had inspected him _this_ way. The outside of Jack’s thighs were warm against Tim’s inseam, far closer than necessary even if Jack was squinting to see. 

...Could he really _not_ see that Tim was lying? Or was he doing this on-purpose? ...What if Jack _wanted_ an excuse like this to get up close and personal with him? He became suddenly _very_ aware of the very few inches between them. If Tim stretched out his legs, he could very easily wrap them around Jack’s waist... 

Tim was mentally talking-down a half-stiffy, the visualization of how Jack might tease him if he popped a boner surprisingly _not_ helping him counteract blood flow swiftly moving south. Would Jack just keep putting his hands on him until he found something? Half of Tim was excited to find out, and the other half was terrified. 

Luckily, Jack’s focus was on his face and hairline-- anywhere freckles might pop up and hide in plain sight- and Tim wasn’t in danger of a full hardon just _yet_. But the gentle pressure of Jack’s fingers skirting his hairline was… intimate _and_ erotic. The fact that he was getting excited over it maybe said more about him than anything else, but Jack’s touches were _familiar. Certain_. There was something comforting in that.

It didn’t help the issue of tights pants, though.

“Well I don’t see anything…” Jack said as he stroked his thumb across Tim’s jawline twice. “Sure it wasn’t old blood-splatter?” Jack teased. “Killing things on your vacation? Always helps _me_ relax…”

As pressure slightly let up on Tim’s chin, the thought that Jack might already be done ‘checking’ him-- _touching_ him- became unbearable, and he said the first thing that came to mind. “Maybe they were on my back.” He greedily wanted more, and quickly pressed his luck before his courage left him. 

Jack didn’t miss a beat. “ _On your back_ , huh?” The tone wasn’t missed by Tim, and the CEO raised a single brow, the thumb stroking the double’s jaw pausing as they looked at one another. “You think so?”

He _knew_. Tim knew he knew. Or at the very least, he was _highly_ suspect, Jack’s own gaze calculating as he tried to figure out Tim’s angle. Tim wasn’t going to admit he was making it up, though. Nope, he stubbornly stuck to his lie, further entrenching himself in pursuit of Jack’s hands on more of his body.

Tim could feel his face heating, hoping only that it hadn’t yet shown up as a blush on his face, and committed himself to the lie. “I uh, didn’t wanna admit it at first,” Tim quickly improvised, the sheepishness in his voice real-enough though, “but uh… I was drinking pretty heavily when I first thought I saw one… The _freckles_ , I mean. I was on vacation,” he quickly dug himself deeper into the lie; of why he might be confused about some non-existent freckles, “So I mean _maybe_ I’m wrong,” he falsely conceded with a casual shrug as his heart raced. “But I still thought you’d wanna know…”

Jack made a considering noise before moving away, stepping back from between Tim’s legs expectantly and gesturing for Tim to hop off the desk. He did so with less eagerness than he felt, before Jack was gesturing for him to turn around.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jack said after a moment, a hand on the junction of Tim’s neck and shoulder from behind, thumb brushing up the back of Tim’s neck just once. “C’mon, Timtams. Shirts off, lemme check those corporate goods before I airlock some dummies for shoddy work.”

Tim couldn’t believe this was actually _working_. Jack’s hands on his face had been nice. But his back? _The rest of his body?_

And furthermore, he realized he was absolutely, most assuredly going to get hard from this, and he only had whatever time it took for Jack to ‘inspect’ his back to figure out how to cover that fact. 

Stripping the layers in the cold office helped a little, but as the yellow sweater Tim wore beneath everything else joined the pile and left him bare, Jack’s warm, big hand laid on his shoulder, and Tim gave a little involuntary shiver at the contrast. He crossed his arms aiming for casual, though with Jack at his back and not seeing his face, it came off as annoyance.

“Yeah yeah, cold office, I’ll _try_ to make this quick,” Jack said in a way that informed Tim he was going to be as thorough as necessary regardless of how long it took, and that the double only had himself to blame for that. 

“I’ll live,” Tim managed in a tone that didn’t betray how _not_ upset he was about that. He placed his hands palm down on the desk, ‘bracing’ himself in a way that meant he was ready for Jack to ‘look’ his fill.

The CEO didn’t disappoint. Especially as Jack moved him better in angles of the light, or how his hands splayed unnecessarily about the muscles in his back, making little flattering comments as he did. Tim didn’t know how Jack running his palm firmly up Tim’s spine did _anything_ for finding errant freckles, but he wasn’t going to complain. He dipped his head forward as Jack’s hand slid right up the back of his neck and into his hair. He bit his lip from making a noise of pleasure.

There was no way this was just a simple inspection. No matter how you looked at it. Jack thought he was god’s gift to the universe, yeah, but the way he handled Tim right now wasn’t out of interest in _himself_. Tim lead a more active lifestyle than Jack, that much was just facts, but while they were roughly the same size, Tim knew he had more tone. And Jack’s hands knew that, too. 

“Damn Timmy, I’ve gotta say-- Having you run around the moon all day? _Definitely_ good for us. Like, _wow._ ” Jack's thumb stroked the back of Tim’s neck. “Not a single freckle, though, pumpkin. Maybe I’m not being thorough-enough, hm?”

Excitement went up Tim’s back at the clear invitation in Jack’s voice. Cock flexed in his pants, and he made a noise of want deep in his throat that he wasn’t sure Jack didn’t hear. Did it even matter if he did? He didn’t care. Especially as Jack pushed his hand further up Tim’s neck into his hair, making a slow fist that gently tugged some of the longer locks there as if to make sure he was still paying attention.

Tim would never live it down if he came untouched in his pants-- especially after how much he’d jerked off _before_ calling Jack’s comm. But there was fantasy, and then there was actually _living_ it.

Whatever errand Jack must’ve sent Rhys on, the older man probably hadn’t accounted for extended perusal of Tim’s muscular back. The cybernetic man hadn’t taken more than a few steps into the office when he saw _something_ out of his wildest fantasies happening right before him, and froze in his tracks. Tim also froze where he stood as they both heard the doors open, palms still pressed to Jack’s desk and the man’s hand at the base of his neck.

Jack recovered with an easy enough smirk when his eyes settled on his pretty PA, and he gave Tim’s neck a little squeeze of acknowledgement.

“I can, uh…” Rhys stuttered stupidly as both men looked at him, mouth slightly hanging open and expression as if mercenary day had come early (and he’d been a _very_ good boy). He didn’t move from where he was closer to the doors, but his eyes remained locked on the pair; his boss and the man’s shirtless body double. His heart-rate quickened. “I can come back later?” 

It was lucidly clear from Rhys’ gaze and tone that his words were the exact _opposite_ of what he wanted to do. Tim turned his red-face away from Rhys in a sudden realization, looking at Jack in question, but not the fun-question that the older man might’ve presumed. Tim’s eyes darted to what lay next to his own hands before looking back at the older man in unspoken communication. 

That’s right. His mask was off. Jack felt stupid that that would slip his mind for even a moment. But then again, he reminded himself that he _had_ been engrossed in enjoying the perfection that was Timmy’s toned, perfect body. Jack knew he wasn’t nearly so fit anymore, but he accounted that to Tim just being a younger man than him (though not by much), and _not_ the bags upon bags of pretzels Jack kept in his desk for stress-eating.

Timmy’s gorgeous body aside, Rhys had never seen under Tim’s mask. Not in any way that _Jack_ knew or sanctioned, anyways. Did he really care if he allowed it, now? Did it even matter? It wasn’t like Rhys knew what was under _Jack’s_ mask.

... _actually_ , that wasn’t a bad thing at all, now that he thought about it. If anyone could truly appreciate the handsomeness of Jack’s natural-face pre-scarring, it would be _Rhys_. 

A calculating smile spread across the CEO’s features as he gave Tim a sort of _knowing_ look, silently challenging him to call him out now that the game was clearly up. “You don’t need to go anywhere, pumpkin,” Jack said to Rhys with a smirk, eyes darting to Tim’s before back on his personal assistant. “I might need to airlock a couple _surgeons,_ though. We’re looking for freckles this guy claimed he saw.” Jack smirked to himself as he patted Tim’s bare shoulder shamelessly; taunting him. The bait was cast.

“...anything I can help with?”

And Rhys took it just like he’d hoped. Jack smirked and looked back at his body double. The caught-expression there was cute, but the full-body blush? Oh, Jack would have to file _this_ away for later. Also the fact that Tim was not ending this unexpected inspection now that Rhys was on scene. _That_ was perhaps the suddenly most-interesting part about this whole thing. 

“Yeah, I can’t find shit,” Jack added, though he didn’t call out the obvious lie that hung in the air. He could feel the movement of Tim’s muscles beneath his skin as the older man gave his shoulder a squeeze. Tim still didn’t deny having some mystery-freckle worth standing half-naked over his boss’s desk for, and Jack was mentally singing praises for the double’s surprising tenacity and beneficial-duplicity. “You’ve got magnification on that thing, right Rhysie? Some freckle-locating laser?” 

Rhys approached with not as red a face as Jack might’ve expected, but there was still a furious blush on that pretty pale skin. Jack watched closely with far more interest than anticipated, wanting to see the moment Rhys set eyes on Tim’s-- _Jack’s_ \- face. 

Tim turned towards Rhys with a sheepish, half-guilty smile, and Rhys’ lips parted a bit in surprise as he saw what the other man looked like under the mask. It was… strange and yet totally familiar. It was still Jack’s face, as far as Rhys understood, but just… maskless. Different. His eyes darted to Jack of their own volition, and whatever the older man saw there, he must’ve liked, because the grin that spread across his face made Rhys hotly blush down his neck and shoulders, and he looked back at Tim. 

“Um, ahh… Where did you say you saw it?” Rhys hated how his voice came out, wavering and definitely not as confident or professional as he was… _thinly_ trying to be, he could admit. Jack was clearly laughing at him, even if he just had a smug grin plastered on his face as Rhys watched him out of his periphery pretending to be helpful. This was too good to pass up. Working with Jack after all this time definitely made him more human, but didn’t remove him from the pedestal completely; Jack was still Rhys’ hero, and about ninety-nine percent of Rhys’ masturbation-fantasies were about the CEO. 

If Jack thought his ‘fanboy’ phase was over, then Rhys was just glad he’d never stepped foot in his apartment. 

“On his _back_ ,” Jack informed with a smirk. “Can’t say that entirely surprises me. Dive right in there, cupcake,” Jack encouraged, turning Tim with a big hand to offer his back to Rhys. He gave Tim’s flank a pat. “Stand up straight, pumpkin. Let my cool robo-PA scan you or whatever.”

Rhys tch’d in annoyance at Jack while the older man just leaned against his desk and grinned, gripping the edges. Tim stammered an awkward “...I was drunk when I thought I saw it,” sticking to the lie he wasn’t sure any of them even pretended to believed. All he knew was that he didn’t quite yet have to explain himself, and the longer that got put off, the better.

Rhys placed a flesh palm tentatively on Tim’s back, actually using his other palm’s light function as if to prove his sincerity in looking for errant marks. Something as small as a freckle seemed silly to Rhys to even be concerned about, but then he supposed Jack needed everything to match properly to fit that big huge ego, and if it meant Rhys got to _personally_ be a part of that process, he was grateful to be aboard.

Jack watched the pair of them, both red faces ridiculously attractive despite the fact, eyes nervously darting to him before focusing elsewhere. 

Jack cupped Tim’s cheek in his hand, and the double leaned into it without realizing it before he was quickly snapping his eyes up to Jack’s face. The older man stroked his cheek two more times before releasing him to casually lean to the side and _watch_.

Jack _knew_ , and Tim knew he was screwed and _entirely_ looking forward to what that might mean for him as Jack’s expression shifted, watching Tim’s uncovered face while Rhys handled him. The sexual tension in the room could be cut with a knife, and Tim’s pants became that much more too-tight.

The comm in Jack’s pocket rang as he leaned against his desk watching this scene with a dirty, smug smirk, and he frowned down at the ID. He’d been waiting for this call, but it couldn’t have come at a _worse_ time. 

Jack answered without taking his eyes off the pair. He was already planning his next moves while Rhys valiantly kept up his search in vain. Jack slid his free hand over the desk to cover the back of Tim’s hand. The double pursed his lips to not make a sound. “This better be _good._ ” 

“Oh, yes sir!” the cheery voice reported in his ear. “Excellent news! The early samples from phase one have all completed process two. We’re still waiting on those replacement samples to make sure the effects can be safely replicated to the same degree, but at the moment we’re very exci--”

Jack took his eyes from the sight of Tim biting his lips as Rhys continued to ‘inspect’. His heart was suddenly racing in anticipation, mind playing all kinds of scenarios of altered versions of what he was seeing before him; naked, guilty pleasure playing over Tim’s bare face as Rhys shamelessly touched his bicep. He imagined his own _real_ face making the same expressions with no mask. 

He spoke into the comm with authority. “Have it ready, I’m coming down there right now.”

He ended the call before taking another look at the pair who were now watching him back-- maybe waiting for Jack to do or say something as the spell was definitely broken- and he was pushing off the edge of his desk while two sets of his eyes watched him go. 

“I’ve got something to take care of. You find any freckles, you send me pictures, got it Rhysie?” Jack said in a halfway-joking tone. “Nah, _really,_ send me _any_ pictures you think I need to see. _Any,_ got that? Good. Play nice while I’m gone.”

Rhys’ hands were already off Tim as Jack practically ran out of the office, a huffed, awkward-sound leaving the cybernetic man as Tim stood up straight from where he’d still been willingly hunched over Jack’s desk. He stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles.

How freaking lame, and how very _Jack._

The annoyance didn’t kill Tim’s hardon, though. He was pretty sure nothing would after this little interlude.

“All, uh, all clear,” Rhys announced lamely as he took a step back from Tim’s immediate space. “No freckles,” he clarified with red cheeks. Tim looked back and kind of chuckled an awkward little thanks, not turning towards him as he began redressing and worrying about what to do about his tented pants. 

Rhys didn’t leave things at that, though, breaking the otherwise-silence. “Can, ah, can I ask you something personal?” he spoke to Tim’s back, the man’s posture tightening in focus. 

Tim was… He was not ready to address _anything_ seriously like adults right now, even if he’d more or less invited himself up here with the fantastical-intention to maybe bang his boss. Full-brakes on that for now. He suddenly had a _lot_ of new information to handle. “Uh, yeah, sure.” His voice sounded casually detached at least, for all his pants were tighter.

“...Are you and Jack _actually_ the same? Like, all over? Uuh-- not that-- I mean--”

Tim blushed at the thought as he picked through the pile of his upper-layers for the first thing to put on. 

_All over_. He knew what Rhys was asking, and he was interested himself where that line of questioning might lead. Jack made him in his image or whatever the hell, and he’d been adamant about _accuracy_ down to the birthmark on his ass, so it would reason to follow that they _must_ be… _the same._

A total double in every way, Jack always claimed. Which gave Tim hours of dirty masturbation fantasies. 

He didn’t think it was one-hundred percent, though.

“More or less,” Tim grunted casually, trying to get control of this damn hardon. Not the time, not the place, but his body was _on board._

“...More or less?” Rhys asked for clarification. Tim looked at him just over his shoulder and lifted a brow, then smirked. Why the hell not? He was pretty sure he knew what Rhys was really asking. The way Rhys had touched him had told him a _lot_ about the other man. He wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking.

Rhys’ eyes widened a bit as he considered Tim’s expression. “How accurate would you say?”

“Are you talking about the _face_?” Tim teased with insinuation, smirking a little in thinking he might as well play this out to its potential. 

Rhys surprised him with his openness right back. “Are _you_?”

Tim faced forward again, quickly pulling himself together and kind of chuckling. He was embarrassed, and super turned on, and whatever… _that_ had been before Jack had ran out of there was something Tim _definitely_ wanted to explore. 

His heart was still pounding from the way Jack had watched them, Rhys at his back, and Tim desperately wanted Jack _on_ him. In whatever capacity he’d allow; simple touches and firm caresses without guise of quality-control; or with his hands pulling Tim’s face down to kiss him while he rode the CEO; Rhys’ hands on his hips-- also fucking him maybe? Mm, it gave Tim way too many ideas and he did not possess nearly enough blood in his brain to have that conversation right now.

He tucked his cock up into his pants feeling like a horny moron, and pulled everything over before turning and walking down the dais, speaking behind himself to Rhys in refusal to look at the other man’s face.

“I am going to get some fresh air, go home, come back later, and then I’ll have that conversation with you,” he affirmed the last part loudly as his feet sped towards the exit without his permission. He wouldn’t stop them. He needed to get home, jerk himself off until he could safely recall the look in Jack’s eyes and the feel of Rhys’ hands _without_ getting hard, and then muster up the courage to go back up there and ask his boss and his personal assistant for a very-real three-way.

Jack would go for it. He _knew_ Jack would go for it. The man was far too vain _not_ to be interested in seeing the whole of him, _touching_ him in greedy appraisal and appreciation. He already knew what was going on… Tim had seen it in his face, and instead of making fun of him, he’d _gone_ with it. 

Jack _was_ interested. And Rhys… Well, he’d been a Jack fanboy the first time they’d met. The man would jump at the idea if his own ‘inspection’ of Tim was any indication. The only thing stopping him from maybe asking the other man home was his overwhelming excitement. It had been _way_ too long since he’d been laid. And he was not going to let a lack of stamina ruin it for him.

Yeah, this might take longer than he expected, walking kind of funny as his belt rubbed deliciously against his cock all the way back to his front door.

 _Something_ had almost happened this afternoon. That was real and he _knew_ things would have gone somewhere without that damn call that had interrupted the moment. Jack might’ve _touched_ him. Kissed him. Dragged a hand so slowly down his torso that there was no doubt where he intended to go and what he intended to do. Tim wouldn’t have stopped him either way. And that wasn’t even counting what _Rhys_ might do with live Handsome-Jack-porn playing out right in front of him.

Tim wasn’t necessarily proud of how quickly he came once he got his hand around his cock across his threshold, but he gave himself a little credit that he’d mostly caught his release, and didn’t get hard again nearly as fast as he assumed he might.

He wouldn’t be getting back up to Jack’s office today, though, that was for damn sure. Not until at least a dozen more orgasms, until the sight of his own hands stopped turning him on so badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim is a kinky boy with some narcissism issues as well BAHAHAHA. Jack's personality over the years has brushed off. Rhys is his backup plan, and I can't say Rhys would be too mad about the idea overall. I am having a lot of fun.
> 
> The next chapter _should_ be the last, but if it gets too long I may bridge some things differently and cut it, but this fic should be done in entirety this week :D Hang with me yall!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter should be up soon. I wanted to cut it here so I could freely go to town on the smut next chapter without worrying about a chapter getting 'too long' mwehehe :D Comments appreciated! ^___^ The next chapter will definitely be last, and we shall earn that explicit rating LOL

It was after lunch by the time Tim left his apartment the next day.

He was ready to get what he wanted, and unless this whole endeavor went completely balls up, he’d at _least_ be going home with Rhys. 

That’s what he kept telling himself, anyways, not allowing his confidence to falter. He had a little swagger in his step, excited with anticipation and more than a little proud of himself to pursue the looks and touches of which mere memory had nearly resulted in a case of friction-burn to the dick. 

He wasn’t even ashamed of that fact, but all the more resolved to get someone _else’s_ hands on him for once.

He had it all planned out. What he wanted to say to them, how he wanted to get the conversation started, and about a million little variations therein. He wasn’t _too_ concerned with the aftermath of such a thing, either, as he planned for that as well. Being Jack’s body-double often meant having to think on his feet and have backup plans for his backup plans, and while he could certainly act it, Tim’s ego _wasn’t_ so big that he couldn’t swallow his pride in every attempt to get what he wanted.

He’d be more legitimately-surprised if neither of them wanted him, especially after yesterday. All his planning banked on gut-instinct and that _look_ that had been in Jack’s eye. One which he’d lost sleep over for all his fantasizing.

He ran fingers slightly through his hair, making sure he still looked as good as he felt while his feet carried him towards his goal, and down the private hall that held the doors to Jack’s office.

His plans did _not_ account to run into Rhys first, _outside_ Jack’s office and wholly-engrossed in the door’s security as it was apparent he was locked out. 

This wasn’t a scenario he’d planned for-- Jack and Rhys to be at odds in a way the CEO would lock him out. That definitely complicated matters, but he could also adapt.

Tim raised his hand in greeting as he got closer, Rhys not yet taken notice of his presence. “Hey.”

Rhys made a surprised little noise before looking at Tim with wide eyes. His echoeye was active, glowing as he was clearly trying to hack the doors as the access-panels were bathed in red. Why he was locked out, Tim didn’t know, but the distress on Rhys’ face was real enough. Maybe he was afraid Jack was going to fire him.

“Tim? Thank-- _Jack needs help_!” Rhys quickly spat out, attention back on the security panel in vain.

The note of fear there washed something icy over Tim, and he placed a hand on Rhys’ shoulder, getting the other man’s attention back on him. His other hand went to the gun at his thigh. “What’s happening in there? Let me try my access-codes.”

Rhys looked at him blankly with that glowing eye as he allowed the other man to try to punch in the codes he knew, then realized Tim couldn’t see the footage overlay he had of the security cameras in the office. He stood next to the double fidgeting with fear as Tim’s codes were rejected in a red drone one after another, just like Rhys’ had been.

“His… his mask is off, _I think_ ,” Rhys spoke in a covert way that Tim knew meant he didn’t _think_ , but he _knew_ , and he knew he maybe _shouldn’t_ know. “I don’t know what’s happening. I was locked out when I came back and he’s _down_ and I-- _Wait_ don’t you have a retinal scan or something?”

Tim _did,_ actually, and he felt silly that he was still trying his own access codes. None of the codes _he_ knew would override any lockdown if Jack’s security systems had kicked in. But the CEO’s own retinal-scan? Yeah, Tim had undergone corrective eye-surgery and pigmentations to _become_ Jack. Voice-modulator, iris-engraving, and if the scientists were to be believed, _fingerprints_ as well (though he had his own doubts about that). But it _should_ work.

Tim lined his face up with the retinal scanner while he placed his hand against a panel. The access-denied screens turned green with a pleasant melodic chime.

“Hello, _Sexy_ ,” the programmed voice greeted as the locking mechanisms lifted, and Rhys released a sigh of anxious-relief as he made to dart through the office doors.

Tim stopped him, a hand on Rhys’ shoulder with gun drawn in the other. “Stay behind me,” he ordered as Rhys watched him with concern. “If there’s someone else in there, we’re not exactly gonna take ‘em by surprise.”

Rhys nodded, echoeye still activated and overlaying what he was seeing with the security footage from the office. “I haven’t seen anyone else in there since I was trying to get in,” Rhys spoke quickly and quietly. “Maybe five-minutes before you showed up. I-I don’t know what happened.”

Tim nodded solemnly, and Rhys stayed behind him as they slowly but surely made their way into the office.

They could see Jack laying there on the floor like Rhys had reported, but they didn’t run to him like he would’ve preferred. 

“Security… _wasn’t_ activated,” Rhys reported with a confused whisper as they got closer to the CEO. His eye connected with the systems he intimately knew in the big office, but none of the security measures had actually been tripped. 

It didn’t mean it still wasn’t an assassination attempt, though.

Tim had his gun drawn, on high alert as they slowly advanced towards Jack’s unmoving form. His eyes were everywhere that a would-be assassin might be hiding-- behind the furniture, Jack’s big desk and Rhys’ own, the edges of walls, large decorative statues- but everything was otherwise silent apart from their own carefully-muted footsteps. They made it to Jack’s prone form, and Rhys instantly dropped to his knees with a quiet gasp while Tim stood sentinel above them both.

“...Is he alive? Tell me he’s alive,” Tim said in a low, even voice as he watched the desks warily. If someone _was_ in here, they might be _under_ the desks, even if everything else looked clear.

Rhys was on his knees inspecting Jack as his heart beat in his throat. Jack was warm and twitched under his palm as the cybernetic man carefully touched him. “He’s alive,” Rhys reported, gently calling the CEO’s name in trying to rouse him to consciousness.

He looked up at Tim and indicated Jack’s unmasked face. As badly scarred as Jack was, if one didn’t already know about it, they might assume whatever had caused it was also the reason the CEO was unconscious on the floor.

Rhys tried to keep his voice quiet, level as he asked Tim about the scarring. “...Is this...uh, normal?”

Tim nodded, eyes busy on all possible angles an attack might come from, heart beating hard in his chest in anticipating a fight.

Tim touched Rhys’ calf with the tip of his boot, getting the PA’s attention as he gestured with his chin towards Rhys’ own desk. Rhys nodded with understanding, and Tim quickly checked beneath first his, and then Jack’s own in a slow approach. He found no assassins or anything else, and still no evidence of what had taken the older man down.

Rhys was already pulling up security footage from before his lock-out on his echoeye as Tim still stood vigilant with gun at the ready, his gaze continually coming back to Jack and his unmasked face. The PA sent the footage to his palm display, scrubbing it back to sometime just before Jack had apparently collapsed, and seeing that, further back to when and why the mask had come off.

“Tim I-- I don’t think this was an assassination attempt,” Rhys spoke carefully from where he still stayed close to Jack. “Look at this.”

His cybernetic palm lit up proper as the timecode read sometime a few hours previous. 

Jack had a jar of… _something_. Something he’d opened at his desk and looked at for some minutes before quickly locking down the office and removing his mask.

They watched as he located a mirror from one of his desk drawers, and put some of whatever it was on one downward corner of his scar. The man sat there for some minutes more messing about with work of some kind before examining himself again, and rubbing more of the stuff into the whole of the scarring.

Rhys scrubbed through the footage until Jack had stood up, pacing in annoyance before it was clear that something was _wrong_ before he let it go to regular speed.

They both winced as the CEO grabbed at his face in the footage-- footage Rhys had muted, which he was glad for as it was apparent that Jack was _screaming_ , even from this distance and angle. It didn’t last for nearly as long as they thought before Jack collapsed right where they were now huddled. 

At least now they _knew_ it hadn’t been an assassination attempt. Tim holstered his weapon.

Rhys rolled everything back again, feeling like he was intruding on something very private as the Jack on screen removed his mask and began dabbing the experimental cream onto his skin. Whatever had happened, _that_ had to be the culprit.

“What _is_ that?” Tim asked, looking up towards the CEO’s desk for the container that was on the video. He grabbed the little nondescript jar printed with a label with technical jargon, but the words that stood out were _Shuggurath-serum 3b._ Tim looked to Rhys for some explanation. “Did R&D already finish the research Jack sent me on? For those samples?”

Rhys quickly went through his own messages for any updates from the department that were sent to him for Jack. His flesh hand idly stroked Jack’s forearm. “R&D said only stage one was completed. It... hasn’t been tested yet,” Rhys whined a little in frustration. It wasn’t the first time the CEO had used himself as a guinea pig, but the first time such had resulted in what had looked like serious pain and possible harm. “Who do we even call for this? I don’t-- I don’t know how to fix this-”

Jack grunted where he lay-- either rousing, or still in pain- and Rhys just held him as Tim watched with growing concern. How Jack might react to the fact that his face _under_ the mask had been seen probably wouldn’t be good. If he was coming to, then Tim had little time to react.

“Put the lights out,” Tim instructed, knowing the cybernetic man had control of the office’s systems from within his echoeye. “This, um… It might be safer if you weren’t here when he fully woke up. I’m not sure what he’ll do.”

“No, I’m staying,” Rhys said stubbornly. “This isn’t the first-- _I’m staying_ ,” he repeated, gently petting the CEO’s forearm.

“Rhys,” Tim spoke carefully, “I _really_ don’t know how he might react, and if he decides to--”

“I get it,” Rhys stated, looking up at the other man. “I know who Jack is. I’m not blind. But I _want_ to stay.”

It wasn’t the time to admire Rhys’ tenacity, but Tim couldn’t help it. There was more to Rhys than the fanboy Jack had hired on ages ago, but now was neither the time nor the place. “I might not be able to keep you safe,” Tim stated bluntly, but before Rhys could properly respond to that, Jack was taking a slightly-deeper breath, eyes just barely open as both men stared down with trepidation.

\--

|| 2 hours earlier ||

The tests Jack had demanded the team work all-night-through on had gone _well_ , it was reported. 

It was maybe one of the fastest sample-to-end-product advances they’d ever had completed, but as the only thing standing in the way of that end-result had been _work shifts,_ Jack threw cash at the problem and had them work through the night.

He’d gone back down to R&D that morning when the head researcher had personally messaged him that they had a ‘finished’ product ready for the CEO, but they’d really prefer if he allowed a week to test for residual side-effects and efficacy. Jack had of course ignored that request, and sent Rhys on an early, extended lunch so the CEO could go down and gather the item without anyone knowing his intent.

He was excited when he’d gotten back to the office and locked it down, the little jar of experimental stuff heavy in his large palm.

This _might_ work. He’d seen the footage of cell-division after application on living-tissue samples. _Non_ -human, as well as the damaged tissue cells from an elemental-grenade taken from a… _willing_ donor. They were promising, and on paper, it _worked_ , and worked fast. Despite the head researcher’s opinion that ‘jamming an anshin into a wound’ was more effective, the wound he wanted to use this cream on was _old._

Not that he told _them_ that.

Now was the time to see if it would work on _him_ though.

He unscrewed the top as he sat himself at his desk, a mirror he kept in a drawer waiting for his use. Jack double-checked that the office was locked from Rhys’ own access-codes, wanting to give himself some moments privacy for the stuff to work as he took a small dab with his pointer finger, and with a deep breath, rubbed it into the corner of his scar.

He felt nothing for several moments, frowning to himself as he remembered the activation-time or whatever, and went about minor work for distraction once he waited.

There was a little tingle around the good-skin where he’d rubbed the cream into the scar, and Jack looked at himself in the mirror again with dreadful hope.

The edges of the scar felt weird. Not bad-weird, but weird just the same. The scar was bad-- it wasn’t even the color of his flesh- but he watched in the mirror as the edges of it definitely _changed._

Jack’s heart rate sped with excitement, anticipation, and worst of all, _hope._ The tissue there tickled, like ants on his skin as the discoloration changed; it was becoming less-otherworldly where he’d rubbed the stuff in. Color shifting to something more like his own _skin._

Jack felt his stomach give an anxious drop of excitement, undue moisture in his eyes. This was the first time anything had even come _close_ to altering his scar. The plastic surgeries had never taken, and the anshins he’d indeed stuck into his face hadn’t healed _anything._ His heart beat in terror of this being another dead-end; something with a purpose only to get his hopes up high enough to permanently crash them to bits. 

He couldn’t think about such prospects right now, and quickly applied the cream to the rest of the scar tissue on his face. Feelings welling up inside of him had him blinking rapidly to dispel even the idea of tears, and Jack waited, pacing with nervous energy, too-anxious to sit down as the stuff soaked in.

The tingling was expected, but the magnitude of it was not, and before he could even run to the mirror to check, the feeling had increased from electric-intensity to white-hot lightning in nerve-endings he’d assumed were dead from their cauterization.

It was like being branded all over again, and yet so much worse. It was all he was aware of-- not the dropping to his knees or the way his voice echoed the pain back to him off the expensive office walls. He wasn’t aware if he’d even tried to wipe it off or not, not that that would help. Somewhere, in the part of his brain that wasn’t consumed with interpreting the agony in a way that _wasn’t_ sending him straight into shock, Jack found the fact that his ruined left-eye _didn’t_ hurt to be amusing. 

Not that it helped in any way or kept him from collapsing unconscious to his office floors.

Regaining consciousness wasn’t the same thing as regaining coherency, either, and as Jack weakly opened his eyes, he didn’t understand what was happening or where he was, let alone how much time had passed. The only thing in his head was his _face._

And the fact that his throat hurt. He must’ve screamed himself raw. 

Rhys was behind him, holding the CEO as Jack blearily looked about, unfocused and dazed. He blinked at Tim a few times, dizzy and slightly incoherent. “...is it still there?” Jack muttered with some confusion, feeling almost drunk; tranquilized. 

It took a moment for Tim to understand what Jack was asking, watching the way the older man was trying to focus on Tim’s own face. Tim’s hand cupped behind Jack’s cheek without thinking, gently stroking the skin just below his ear, and cautious on actual cheek-skin as he tried to comfort the older man. It was easy to see what Jack had been trying to do; what the whole _true_ purpose of that research had been. It made something in his chest ache. “Yeah, still there.”

The look that overtook the older man’s face was way too raw and open without the mask to mute his expressions, and Jack closed his eyes tightly, turning away and hiding his face in Rhys’ chest without realization. He was disoriented, but acutely ashamed with hopes utterly dashed. 

Tim squeezed Jack’s hand as he could feel his heart in his throat. He hadn’t seen such emotion cross Jack’s face in _years_ , and he fiercely wanted to reassure him. Especially at the defeated frown made that much more prominent by the painful scarring marring his face.

“Ta--” Jack’s throat hurt, his voice stammered a little, “Take me home…” he murmured against Rhys. “...take me home...”

Rhys and Tim met eyes over Jack, and the double spoke erring on the side of caution. “I can manage it if you didn’t--”

“I’m still staying.”

Tim just nodded silently in assent.

“I’m really not sure it’s safe to put the mask back on him,” Tim voiced their identical concerns softly. If Jack could hear or comprehend what he was saying, he didn’t have any input aside from trying to hide his face against Rhys. “It’s-- it’s different than mine,” he clarified. “Bio-synthetic. I don’t know if that cream crap will kill the biogel in his.”

“That’s fine. I can remotely shut-down the security cameras on the way to his penthouse,” Rhys informed. “The ones for Helios’ generic security, any doors, everything. Lock everyone and everything out.”

Tim nodded. That would work. “Do it.”

\--

Jack was able to stand with all the command of a sleepwalker, and between the two of them-- one of Jack’s arms slung over Rhys’ shoulders, and one over Tim’s- they got the CEO home and put to bed. 

It wasn’t the first time either of them had been there-- and not even the first time entering Jack’s bedroom for various _professional_ reasons- but tucking the CEO into bed was a new experience entirely. It was only all the more novelty when Jack kept groping for them to stay put nearby, his sentences not entirely making sense, but the man calming significantly when his hand was held.

Tim paced as Rhys sat gingerly next to the older man, holding his hand in his flesh one and petting it with his other. Tim stopped pacing to stand nearer the bed, gazing down at Jack’s scarred face in the glow of Elpis from the viewport in Jack’s bedroom. The desperation the older man had to fix his face made all those ‘quality checks’ that much more poignant.

It really was different than he’d expected after all these years, but not in a _bad_ way. Well, it _was_ a bad scar-- _really bad_ \- but not _repulsive_. Not to him, at least. There was something reassuring in a weird way to know the man he’d been fashioned from was still under there, in a sense; the same man he’d fought alongside of before he became a powerful CEO. 

“Did… Is this--” Rhys’ voice dropped lower out of concern and reverence, “... _is_ this okay? That stuff didn’t burn him or anything?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied, watching Rhys’ flesh hand which was only inches from Jack’s scar as he stroked the older man’s hair. “It’s a little different than I remember, but yeah.” He didn’t go into detail about how the older man had gotten the scar, and Rhys didn’t ask.

Rhys looked up at Tim. “I could echo R&D but… I’m not sure how much he told them, or how much they even know,” Rhys said with more concern for Jack’s privacy than the scientists Jack might airlock if they revealed something Jack himself hadn’t.

" _I’ll_ call them,” Tim said definitively. “They’ll tell me everything.” He had enough to go off of, and as far as the scientists on the call would be concerned, _Jack_ had some questions for them.

Mainly about the _lack of consciousness_ and Jack’s drunk-like, dazed state.

The comm rang only twice before it was picked up, and after some Jack-like insult in lieu of greeting, he got right down to the matter at hand. “Why the hell am I so goddamn drowsy?” Tim bitched into the comm in what Rhys had to admit was the best Jack impersonation he’d seen yet, the double’s face wearing a frown Rhys was more than familiar with. Tim’s eyes met Rhys’ own, and he gave a thumbs up in encouragement. 

“A-As the pamphlet explained-” the tech stuttered as Tim listened, rolling his eyes because _of course_ there was some kind of pamphlet that Jack probably hadn’t even read in the first place, “-cellular reconstruction through activation of sub-topical skin cells _will_ use latent energy, sir-”

“ _In English_ ,” Tim spoke rudely in lieu of being able to ask for further clarification. He’d have to tell Jack about even making this call, let alone pretending to be him using some experimental crap. He wondered if the CEO had understood exactly what he was doing, or not, for that matter.

“Ahh-” the tech audibly gulped on the other end of the call, “-it _may_ feel similar to a post-caffeine crash if used on a large enough sample of-- _I mean_ , spot-treatments at the moment were promising on small areas, but uh, _widespread_ use may increase those effects? We did suggest taking a multivitamin with use for clinical trials, but…”

Tim wanted to ask about the pain he’d seen Jack go through on the security footage-- was that normal?- but then he also didn’t know the implications of what effect Jack’s Eridian-artifactual-scarring might produce as well. How much did Jack tell them about how he’d obviously intended to use it? Probably not as much as Tim himself knew. 

“Send another copy of that pamphlet to my secretary,” Tim ordered as Rhys looked up at mention of himself. “Anything else you dummies forgot to tell me? Is this crap supposed to sting?” He watched as Rhys turned his attention back on Jack. The PA stroked the older man’s hair as Tim half-listened to the scientist explain any number of side-effects (nausea, dizziness, tingling, _slight_ burning sensation, etc.) but nothing that was otherwise life-threatening. 

It didn’t make him feel _too_ much better, but as Jack didn’t appear to be in any kind of real distress anymore, he supposed the effects were already done and over. So long as they didn’t use it again, Jack would recover.

He ended the call and came back to Jack’s side. He ran his own fingers through Jack’s hair after Rhys had just done the same. “He’s just basically exhausted. It sapped his energy,” Tim said in his own tone of voice, thinking again of the image of Jack silently screaming that Rhys had pulled up, and compared it with his own memory of the man getting that branded into him in the first place. Jack had yelled and ended up on his knees in pain that time as well, but he’d been full of the same fire that left its mark on his face. _This_ had been so much worse comparatively. “Until he’s coherent, I don’t really know….”

“We should stay with him,” Rhys proposed, and then looked up sharply at Tim with quickly-pinkening cheeks. “N-not like anything weird or anything.”

“No, I agree, we should both stay,” Tim responded, thinking about some emergency happening and needing to call some other department or something. Rhys could handle technical details, and Tim was sure he had it in him to calm Jack down about his face. _If_ he gained coherency after some rest. “Clear whatever from his schedule that you can. I can make any calls from his home office.”

Rhys nodded as they figured out a plan, and Tim caught the curious, questioning looks Rhys sent more than a few times throughout the evening. The cybernetic man probably had one of two very distinct questions on his mind. It was hard to tell if he wanted to ask Tim why he hadn’t come back yesterday, or if he wanted to ask how Jack had gotten the scar in the first place.

Tim chose to throw him a bone. 

“You know,” Tim began softly as he sat at Jack’s feet, “This isn’t the way I imagined the three of us ending up in bed together.”

Rhys snorted and went a little red, but the smile on his face was tempered to the seriousness of the situation at hand. “Um, yesterday, you said you’d have _that_ conversation with me…”

“Uh huh,” Tim agreed, turning his head from where he was looking at his hands to meet Rhys’ gaze. 

“...Can we have it now?”

Tim dragged a hand down his face, the grin there tired with anxiety. His voice was amused at remembering Rhys wanted to know if him and Jack were _truly_ identical. The fact he wanted to know _right now_ only lent to the surreality of the day’s events. “If me and Jack have the same dick?”

“I, uh,” Rhys chuckled a little, keeping his voice low, a little in disbelief that he was in Jack’s bed, petting his boss’s hair, talking to the man’s body-double and asking about _dick-description_ of all things. “Maybe not exactly _that_ so much as where that conversation might’ve been _heading_ ,” he clarified, meeting Tim’s eyes a moment.

Tim kept his gaze, a sort of humoring-smile on his face as he didn’t _have_ a plan for _this_ situation, and instead just spoke plainly and without pretense. His thumb stroked over Jack’s calf under the blanket, still cautiously-optimistic.

“I’d really really like to have both of you in bed at the same time,” Tim stated simply, smile growing a bit at the way Rhys’ gaze burned with intensity, “But even if _he’s_ not interested-” he included, though Tim _really_ believed Jack _would_ go for it, “-I’d still be interested in just me and you. If you want, some time. Just putting it out there.” Rhys gazed at him silently for several beats, and Tim could feel it becoming awkward, so he spoke again. “I find you attractive,” he added with a shrug and a little grin. “So there.”

Tim took his gaze from Rhys first, taking up one of Jack’s hands and stroking over the older man’s fingers. No, this is _not_ how he’d expected this little proposition of his to go. He’d imagined being far more charming, joking, maybe even working in some lame innuendos that he knew Jack would’ve loved, but worry for the older man wore out any desire to scheme. 

Tim hoped seeing Jack’s face didn’t complicate his chances at a successful bid to get railed by his boss in the near future. They could keep watch of him for now, but there’d be no telling Jack’s actual mental-state until he got some rest. 

Rhys quietly cleared his throat before speaking in a whisper, as if scared to both jinx it and disturb the CEO’s rest beside him. “...Would it be inappropriate to ask Jack when he wakes up?”

Tim had to stop himself from laughing hard enough to disturb Jack, feeling his cheeks grow heated as he was charmed by Rhys’ own desire. 

It brought him back down to reality, as well. Tim didn’t know _what_ to expect when Jack woke up. But as long as that crap Jack had slathered on didn’t have any other unexpected side-effects, Tim wanted to remain hopeful. 

“Depends _how_ he wakes up,” Tim said, reaching for the hand of Jack’s which Rhys had in his own. Tim’s pinky and ring finger brushed over Rhys’ own while the double stroked the meat of Jack’s palm with his thumb. “Best case scenario and he’s fine and _we’re_ fine and everything’s fine,” Tim began with a smug little smirk as he looked at all three of their hands, “then uh…” Tim’s cheeks felt hot, and it was a weird thing to feel so concerned and also, oddly, turned on, “Well. You’ll have a story no one else will have, anyways.” Tim looked up to give him a wink.

Rhys’ face went entirely crimson as his gaze passed between Jack’s sleeping face and Tim’s own several times. Tim could see the wheels turning there as the realization set in that while many fanboys might fantasize about being in the middle of a Handsome Jack sandwich, Rhys might be one to actually _live_ the dream. 

The kiss Tim pressed to Rhys’ fingers as he took the man’s flesh hand-- slightly in tease, but mainly because he meant it- proved deliciously overwhelming, and Rhys excused himself from the bed to ‘use the restroom’, keeping his front lower half faced away from Tim as best he could to escape the room discreetly. 

Tim snorted as he held Jack’s hand and stayed by his side. There was no hiding that tent in Rhys’ pants, but Tim wouldn’t make fun of Rhys for it. Tim spent much of the past twenty-four hours in the same state in a bid for control over his own arousal. Jack would probably laugh himself half to death if he knew.

Tim smiled to himself and rubbed his thumb over the back of Jack’s palm again. He wanted the older man in every way, and wanted this hand in particular on a few very select places on his body though in no particular order.

He brought Jack’s hand to his lips, chastely kissing his knuckles in a way he hoped was comforting, and trying to keep his thoughts from the man who had hidden his face in Rhys’ chest in despair. 

When Rhys came back about twenty minutes later-- a slightly-guilty look on his definitely more-relaxed face- the pair discussed the logistics of what might be an overnight stay, and the virtues of taking shifts watching Jack while the other stayed in the nearby guest room.

Neither left him, and neither stayed in the guest room, and with shoes off and outer jackets shed, the two of them eventually fell asleep sitting on either side of the older man. 

Given where they were and who they fell asleep with, their dreams were-- _mercifully_ \- not of the wet-variety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're still gonna end up ruining those sheets though AHAHAH Geez stop flirting over your unconscious boss in his own bed guys damn someone needs a thirst quencher get the gatorade xD 
> 
> [my tumblr](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/) | [my fic masterlist archive](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/post/134979026515/a-ao3-fic-archive) | [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PurgeThatUrge)
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! ao3 FAQ: [Can I post comments anonymously, or if I don't have an Archive account? ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/comments-and-kudos?language_id=en#anoncomment)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS a WHOLE lot of feelings came with this porn xD AHAHAH what how does that work? Anyways, here's the last bit of this installment, I had a LOT of fun here, and this is probably the horniest thing I've written in a long time ad that's good shit xD

Jack woke up in stages some time quite early into Helios’ morning cycle, slowly becoming coherent and aware of how warm and comfortable he was for apparently having slept mostly on his back. Thank fuck for pillows.

Then he realized this comfort was from two bodies on either side of him-- one pressed against his side, the other halfway draped across his chest- and he murmured a little to himself with a cocky, half-asleep smirk of self-satisfaction. 

The thought then occurred to him that he didn’t _recall_ picking anyone up, let alone having some hot-threeway he would’ve _definitely_ remembered, and with no hangover to boot. 

Jack opened his eyes in confusion, expecting to find answers and have memories assail him only to be further flummoxed by seeing _who_ was in bed with him, and having even more questions. He wasn’t sure if he was actually dreaming or not, but he sure as hell didn’t want to wake himself up if he was. 

Jack twitched the arm he had flung over Tim’s belly to press the man’s hipbone with his fingers, the other hand somewhere behind Rhys giving a checking-squeeze. _Definitely_ real, definitely warm, definitely here in his bed. “ _Holy shit.”_

Tim roused suddenly at those whispered, awed words, blinking off sleep though he was otherwise sat-up alert. Their eyes met in the soft glow of Elpis from the large viewport in the wall, and Jack gave him a quirked grin, raising a brow at his double while Rhys still still snored across his chest. “...did I get laid last night?”

Tim’s eyes widened a bit before he rolled them and relaxed just a tad from concern. Any lingering-worries about danger or adverse effects diminished considerably. Tim could feel his cheeks heating, but instead of pointing out the obvious-- _that they were all some manner of dressed_ \- Tim watched Jack very carefully. “...How do you feel? What do you remember?”

“Um, considering how my morning is going so far? Pretty damn good aside from not _caring_ how I got here,” Jack said softly with a smirk, stretching and looking at his PA starting to rouse on his own chest. Rhys’ face went instantly crimson as his sleepy-eyes caught sight of Jack’s own, and the older man looked back to his body double with a toothy grin. “How about an encore?” Jack waggled his brow with a grin, then instantly froze as the smile totally vanished from his face, instant-realization of something _bad_ clicking into place.

Tim proceeded carefully, moving slowly to cover the CEO’s hand with his own as the blood visibly drained from Jack’s face. It was an eerie thing to see, _jarring_ , even, as Jack’s mask usually didn’t show such tells, and right now Jack was… Tim was certain he would’ve actually bolted if the blankets around him weren’t stopping him. 

Rhys met Tim’s eyes, not knowing what to do, but comprehending the situation for how delicate it was. He’d never exactly seen Jack _panicked_ before, but the energy in the room was different. Neither man immediately moved, and Jack remained frozen between them, quick-escape impossible as he was under the sheets and blankets the other two were half-on and half-under themselves. The older man’s breathing became fast, his heart already thundering in his chest.

Tim gently, _carefully_ rubbed his thumb across the back of Jack’s palm as the older man’s entire demeanor changed. His breathing grew shallow, and the air held a charge to it as Jack lowered his face somewhat, watching the progress of Tim’s thumb and also avoiding the double’s eyes. Tim’s own heart pounded hard in his chest. 

“You’re okay, Jack,” Tim spoke gently. “No one saw anything,” he quickly added, knowing what Jack’s utmost concern probably was at the moment. Who knew when the last time Jack had bared his face to someone had been? It made Tim feel oddly protective of the older man, even in the relative darkness of the room with Elpis’ glow.

“...I hacked the security feeds,” Rhys spoke up in the same low, even volume and tone that Tim had. It still made Jack jump, and Rhys took the opportunity for movement to squeeze Jack’s thigh in reassurance where his hand had been resting over the sheet. Jack pointedly didn’t look at him, but Rhys didn’t take it personally. He might not know Jack the way _Tim_ did, but he knew him well enough. 

He probably spent the most time with Jack out of _anyone_ on this entire space station. “No one knows anything. Uh, except… except me,” Rhys added, a bit uncomfortable to relay that as he still wasn’t sure what Jack might end up doing with that information. “Umm....”

“This _threeway_ was Rhys’ idea, by the way,” Tim tried for appealing to Jack’s baser side for _some_ sort of reaction, a wry smile on his face as his eyes darted to Rhys.

The CEO’s bark of hysterical laughter was a surprising shock, and Rhys snorted but didn’t deny the joke. Neither of them knew what to do, but they _knew_ Jack. If there was any way to make the obvious _not_ so heavy, they could manage it with dirty jokes and gentle tones. 

Rhys tactfully moved his attention back to Tim. “If you’re calling _that_ a threeway, then I want my money back,” Rhys teased dramatically with a lot more confidence than his pink cheeks would’ve made them think. It was Tim’s turn to snort, though Jack at least minutely shook his head in amusement, thawing somewhat from the shock, though he still wouldn’t look at either of them head-on.

Of _all_ the dirty fantasies involving his double and his personal assistant in his bed, to have it combine with one of his _nightmares_ was cruel. He felt utterly exposed, not sure where his mask was at this point, and finding it hardly mattered anyways as he was certain the biogel inside was probably already dried out and dead. He’d need to prepare a new one, but right now he didn’t even want to think about it.

Everyone in the galaxy had to know he was hiding something by very virtue of wearing the mask on his face, but he’d been very good about keeping it hidden. Hell, he even circulated some of the more interesting rumors about himself and what was under the mask-- like a tiny robot piloting him like a big meat suit- but Jack was certain none of them expected the truth of _this._

The scarring on its own was bad enough, but somehow the worst thing about _right now_ , Jack found, was that he’d exposed himself for literally _nothing_. The loose-hope he’d had had shattered into a million pieces, research gone nowhere. And he’d lost… an entire day? Hours?

His skin felt cooler than normal without the synthetic-skin plastered over it, and he remembered a burning sensation unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. He wasn’t sure what had happened after that, but he was grateful not to wake up in Helios’ medical ward surrounded by people he’d need to space, at least.

Jack lifted the hand Tim was holding to touch his face, feeling the edges of the damage he knew all too well. _Unchanged_. He dropped his hand back to his lap, and Tim snatched it right back up to wrap his other hand over Jack’s as well. The motion earned him a slight look of acknowledgement from the CEO. Tim steadily returned the gaze, thumb stroking over Jack’s inked wrist.

“...that shit zapped your energy,” Tim began after a moment, his fingers curling around Jack’s palm. “We thought there was some assassination attempt,” Tim explained, and then shook his head with a shallow snort, still trying to get a rise out of the older man. “I didn’t even get to shoot anyone…”

“I was ready to activate the turrets in there once we got you safe,” Rhys’ voice reached Jack’s ears, though the older man turned his face further towards Tim as if to spare Rhys the truth of matters. Rhys’ palm tentatively squeezed Jack’s thigh again in some form of tacit support. His thumb slowly stroked back and forth, trying to comfort. “I wiped all the footage, too,” Rhys added, “from security. Uh, the stuff in your office I left alone, though…”

“....I-- good. Good,” Jack muttered after a minute, taking a steadying breath between them. He’d want to see it before he destroyed it.

“Jack,” Tim began anew, giving the hand between his own a light squeeze before deciding to kill two birds with one stone; make his intentions clear enough, as well make a statement about Jack’s own face, “I’m not ready to be _you_ , so if you could not give me a heart-attack next time, and give one of us a heads-up that you’re gonna do something stupid, that would be really great.” He brought Jack’s hand up to his lips, pressing the lightest of kisses there before lowering it again without presumption.

Jack snorted as if in disbelief-- over Tim pressing a kiss to his hand at all, let alone when he was so repulsive- _and_ over the fact that the double clearly meant his words.

It was touching. And Tim was a good actor, but not the greatest liar. He _meant_ what he said.

“You make a good me,” Jack said softly with a wistful smirk that only made Tim frown. Jack’s eyes quickly darted towards Rhys once before looking back towards Tim. Jack could feel his heart in his throat in a mixture of excitement and-- _he_ refused _to admit it_ \- hopeful anticipation. Neither man would be here-- let alone _next to him in his own bed in his own frickin’ covers_ \- if they found his face as much of a turn-off as he did. “Rhysie’s been drooling over you for ages, so I would know.”

Rhys didn’t have anything to counter with as Tim gave the other man a look, the PA pursing his lips with the reddest-faced-frown he’d ever seen. Rhys _did_ give Jack’s thigh an involuntary squeeze at the statement, but didn’t deny it.

Jack looked down at where both of Tim’s hands held one of his, and then at Rhys’ own hand where it rested on his thigh. They were the first intimate touches-- either pre- _or_ post-sex- he’d had in a very long time. “...if I _didn’t_ get laid last night, then why are you both in bed with me?”

Tim didn’t think it was appropriate to voice concerns that he’d thought Jack might get _violent_ with the exposure of his face. Especially not when the older man was unexpectedly the exact opposite. Tim liked it, to a degree. Despite all the bluster, ridiculously-huge ego, and power that went with controlling the most powerful corporation in the galaxy, Jack was still surprisingly human under it all, with all the same hangups anyone else might have.

Hell, Tim wasn’t one to judge. He’d _clearly_ been a big enough fan of his own identity to completely transform himself into Jack. That is to say, he understood what it was like looking into the mirror and not necessarily liking what you saw; willing to do just about anything to become someone else.

That Jack still had faults, feelings, and insecurities leveled the playing field considerably. Tim wasn’t sure if it was weird or not that it only made him more attracted to the older man. Jack’s fanboys might put him on a pedestal, but Tim was a fan of the man who needed excuses to stroke his face and ‘check’ him over in insecurity. That was something he could relate to, and made Jack just another man instead of a god-- albeit one he was modeled after in his image but Tim wasn’t ready to get his psyche analyzed over what the hell _that_ might mean...

“We were worried,” Rhys spoke up, his voice confident as he gave the CEO’s thigh another squeeze. “Especially when I thought we couldn’t get in.” He thought of the security footage he’d seen on his echoeye, and the minutes he’d been frantic to get to the CEO inside the office before Tim had shown up. “I didn’t want you to wake up alone after... _that._ ” Rhys looked at his own hand, daring to pet at Jack slightly. “...it looked really painful, Jack.”

Jack remembered pain. And he remembered locking down his office before trying the stuff out, but not much after. Rhys must’ve seen it all on the security footage. “...How’d you even get in there?” Jack asked, watching Rhys’ hand on his thigh with interest, and not wanting to hear more about how a freaking crappy ‘wrinkle cream’ took him out. “I used my executive override to lock it all down.”

“Tim showed up and opened it,” Rhys supplied, looking at the double with a sort of sparkle in his eyes which did not go missed. 

Tim offered a half-smirk at the way the other man was looking at him. Whether from genuine gratitude, some type of hero-worship, _or_ the knowledge of _why_ Tim had actually been there at that moment in the first place, Tim didn’t care, and it didn’t matter. 

“ _You_ opened it?” Jack asked.

“Uh, yeah. With the retinal scan and stuff,” he clarified as Jack only snorted. Tim frowned. “None of my access-codes worked either.”

“Guess that gorgeous face is good for more than just lookin’ pretty, huh?” Jack turned slightly towards Rhys in acknowledgement. “Good job calling him, kiddo.”

“He didn’t call me,” Tim began, unabashed with his words for the fact the three of them were already in bed together in what could only be described as _some_ level of intimacy, “I was, uh, actually on my way up there to ask the both of you for a threeway.”

Jack snorted in disbelief, and Rhys let loose a kind of excited little sound he tried to hide with a cough. Tim just shrugged and looked between the two without further elaboration. It wasn’t a secret, and this wasn’t how he’d wanted to have that conversation, but there it was.

“Prospects not looking so good now, huh Timtam?” Jack said self-deprecatingly. He pointed a finger up towards his face with a wry look, and the double surprised him in placing a hand on Jack’s shoulder over his shirt, a thumb caressing the skin at his neck under the collar, and the other hand giving Jack’s own a squeeze. He met Tim’s eyes to see an earnest sort of look there.

“You don’t even know-” Tim began a bit more seriously, looking over Jack’s face in blatant observation, “-how good it is to know you’re still under there.” A look of deep emotion passed on the older man’s face, so alien it made the double almost uncomfortable. Tim palmed the side of Jack’s throat with a smirk, eyes darting to meet Rhys’ once before looking back at Jack. “And anyways, we’re already in bed together. Things are still looking pretty good to me.”

Jack huffed in what was clearly amusement, and though he took his attention back to his lap, there was a small smile on his face as Tim continued to stroke at his neck. Jack gave the hand he held a squeeze before speaking. “Rhysie,” Jack prompted firmly, “Go into my bathroom, top drawer, get me the mirror, okay?”

Rhys was sliding off the bed, eager to assist now that Jack was actually _talking_ to them; thawed out from the shock but still apprehensive. “No problem, Jack,” he said easily, giving the older man’s thigh another squeeze before he did as bade.

Tim didn’t wait until Rhys left the room to speak. “Jack--”

“I know it’s- it’s fucked,” Jack interrupted him earnestly, not caring at the moment, “but that shit _hurt_ , and if it made things _worse_ …” He raised his face to meet Tim’s gaze. The other man returned it evenly. “Lie to me, handsome. How bad _is_ it?”

Tim frowned and didn’t remove his attention from the older man’s face. It was probably messed up on some level (and Tim wasn’t going to start questioning his _own_ metric for judging things since altering his entire _body_ ) but _this_ Jack-- the one who showed weakness and vulnerabilities with what was _clearly_ crippling self-image under the thick layer of lies- _this_ one woke something intensely interested in the double. Tim was already attracted to him, but this raw, human Jack that showed feelings _other than_ in-your-face confidence and ego?

It made Tim inappropriately hard, and he restrained the eagerness with which he just wanted to hold and kiss and comfort the older man, instead stroking his thumb across the defined line of Jack’s jaw. “I haven’t seen _you_ in _years,_ Jack,” Tim spoke plainly, inching his hand closer to Jack’s face which was normally covered, seeing if it would be allowed. “After what she did to you-” He paused a moment to sort of snort in self-chastising amusement. “I thought your face might be _gone_.” Jack snorted just like he’d hoped he would, and Tim tested a finger just under the beginning of one arch of his scar, low on his cheek. “You’re still attractive, you egomaniac… So, get fucked, Jack.”

The ugly-snort that left Jack was one of unchecked amusement on multiple levels. The invitation in the censure was obvious, and the tilt to Tim’s lips told of interest that hadn’t waned. Jack didn’t know exactly what to make of that-- halfway wanting to make a joke about Tim being a kinky weirdo or something- but he just chuckled instead, interest there but wondering in fear if he could even get it up right now with the shame of it all. 

Tim opened his mouth to say something further, but then Rhys returned with the mirror in hand and a look of trepidation. The PA settled back in closely on the other side of Jack, sliding the man the mirror face-side down before gathering his courage to slide his own palm up Jack’s forearm. Rhys’ eyes darted to Jack, then to Tim, and back to Jack again as the older man placed his hand on the Hyperion-branded hand-mirror. 

Rhys was proud of the level confidence and tone with which he spoke, “Whatever you think, um, _I_ still-- Mask or no mask, I still wanna be here, Jack.”

Jack turned to look at Rhys-- _actually_ look at him- and the blush on the younger man was attractive and emboldening. “Creepy fanboys,” Jack slightly teased, moving a big hand to Rhys’ forearm to squeeze in an appreciative manner before taking the mirror in his hand.

“Do you want the light--”

“ _No,_ ” Jack quickly spoke, the response harsher than he’d meant as Rhys recoiled a little in clear worry he’d miss-stepped. Jack took a steadying breath. He wasn’t so dumb to not notice they were walking on eggshells with him right now, and he hated that his damn face reduced him to a reactive coward, but he couldn’t face it in the full light of day; not with the both of them there and present, anyways. But he didn’t want to send them off, either. “Just… No, leave it off,” he said with a heavy breath, reaching a hand out to the younger man to pat his thigh in some tacit apology. Rhys nodded in understanding. 

There was no way _not_ to watch as Jack slowly turned the mirror over, steadying himself and taking a breath in preparation for what he might see. He told himself over and over that Tim and Rhys had already been looking at whatever he was about to find for _hours_ , and even if it was worse, the both of them were _still_ in bed next to him, and had _still_ declared their intentions to stay.

Jack tipped the mirror, finding his eyes in the reflection and trying in vain to calm his heart and the sick-feeling of anxiety growing in his gut. He could hear blood rushing in his ears, jaw going slightly slack before he tightly pursed his lips to keep it closed. His hearing muted and his eyes stung as he looked into the mirror, shallow-breaths coming fast as his one good-eye rapidly moved over inspection of the scar branded into his face. 

It was different, and it _had_ changed, but not at all in the way he’d feared. 

Where otherworldly, _alien_ color had been branded into his face, there was the color of flesh. _His_ flesh; normal, _still-scarred_ , yeah, the damage was still there, but not the sickly tinge of blue the Eridian artifact had left him with.

It looked almost… _normal_. He’d seen nastier scars on bandit warlords they’d put bounties on; wounds and old scars that _definitely_ required a mask of some kind. The damage done to his face was extensive, but he’d seen that alien color for so long now that to have it almost _muted_ … The difference was night and day.

“...holy shit…” 

Jack’s quick-breathing and silence as he looked at himself was taken the wrong way, and Rhys looked at Tim in some silent communication while Jack continued to look at his reflection. The pair moved a bit to their own best attempts to comfort perhaps, when Jack repeated himself far louder.

“Holy _shit_.”

“Jack--”

Jack turned to Tim with a smirk, face raised as he still held the mirror. “It _worked_.” The smirk turned into a full grin. “It- _heh_ \- this?” Jack pointed at his face with a little laugh, looked at Rhys once to see a curious, expectant expression there, and back to Tim in excitement. “It _worked_ , Timmy. The-- Crap, you never saw after-- _This?_ This ain’t _nothin’_ to how it looked before.”

Tim wondered just how bad it must’ve been _before_ he’d tried this Shuggarath nonsense on his face. They’d seen the security footage from the distance of the cameras, yeah, but nothing close-enough for Tim to notice a _distinct_ difference. Not from his mind’s comparison, anyways. A look at Rhys yielded a sort of half-shrug from the PA; if Jack said it was different, then it was different. His mood change was favorable, at least.

“I can’t believe this shit actually worked,” Jack chuckled to himself, looking into the mirror again with further speculation. As far as he could tell, the edges of the scar still looked the same, the boundary of damaged skin unchanged. But the _color_ though. It looked like a normal, human-inflicted wound. Something his body tried to reclaim and fix, instead of the discolored alien damage that had been plaguing him for _years_. “I bet more will actually _fix_ it,” Jack said with hope that wasn’t entirely false for once. 

He tried to free himself from the covers, to get up and locate the stuff and test this theory.

Tim stopped him without even thinking, pinning the older man in place before Jack could much go anywhere. The action surprised all three of them, and Tim was positive that the only reason Jack hadn’t thrown him or threatened him yet was because they were all kind of stunned he’d done it at all.

Tim ignored those thoughts and instead frowned down at Jack. “You _scared_ me. And not just because I don’t know what it means for me if you die from something stupid like this and I’m still here,” Tim further pointed out some of the thoughts he’d had during the long hours they’d simply watched Jack sleep. “Don’t use that shit on yourself again until it’s been tested further, asshole.”

Jack didn’t say anything for some moments, but he wrapped firm, strong fingers around Tim’s wrist where the double held him, and Tim began to wonder if challenging Jack’s authority was maybe the last thing he’d ever do. 

Until, of course, a grin spread across Jack’s unmasked face, and he slid that hand up to knead at Tim’s forearm.

“Y’know, this is kind of super-hot,” Jack stated, turning his gaze in Rhys’ direction as Tim still kept him where he was. Rhys had a look on his face like all his wishes had just been granted, focus shifting back and forth with the pair of them, and Jack turned his smirk back up to Tim. “I know _I’d_ be disappointed if we didn’t take advantage of the fact that we’re already in bed together.” 

His reiteration of Tim’s own words made the double’s heart speed up considerably, and he could feel himself on the way to fully tenting his pants at this quick change of mood. “Can I kiss you?” Tim blurted, looking down at the older man and wanting wanting _wanting_. Jack’s stupid charming grin and _genuine_ happiness at whatever change he’d seen was endearing _and_ erotic, and the little squeeze Jack gave his arm in response was all Tim needed to lower himself to the older man’s face.

Kissing Jack was good. _Very_ good. But the way Jack moved that hand from his arm to his back? _Way_ better. 

Tim couldn’t help the moan he gave into Jack’s mouth as the older man pulled him down further, eyelids fluttering and heart pounding as all his blood was quickly moving south. The way he was sitting from having pinned the older man wasn’t exactly comfortable as his pants became exponentially tighter, and when they finally broke, Tim felt dizzy in the best of ways.

Jack was next pulling Rhys by the shirt down to him while the younger man made a little noise of excitement, in turn making Jack chuckle. Tim watched-- removing himself from pinning Jack, but not removing himself from the man otherwise- as Rhys cupped Jack’s face without a second thought. The older man twitched at the movement involuntarily before he leaned into the PA’s flesh hand on his cheek, and then pulled Rhys into a kiss that was definitely hungry enough for two.

The thought made a husky chuckle rise in Tim, enough to draw the pair’s attention as Jack was tugging Rhys’ plush lower lip with his teeth. Tim gave his head a little dismissive shake; that he wasn’t laughing at them, but he was so _pleased_ with what he was seeing, the noise had come out. “Save some for me, now,” he teased with a smirk and an appreciative look-over. 

“Oh, there’s _plenty_ for you, buttercup,” Jack purred, bringing himself to Rhys’ lips once more and licking his way inside his mouth in a messy kiss only to pull back when Rhys moaned. Jack grinned and took Rhys’ chin in his hand, stroking under his lower lip with a thumb. “Give this handsome man some sugar, Rhysie.”

Rhys’ pupils were blown wide in desire as he turned his attention on Tim, his organic-eye looking nearly black in the soft pink glow of Elpis through the bedroom viewport. Tim was hardly immune to being looked at like that, and he laid a hand on Rhys to steady himself as the PA moved towards his lips in want. 

Tim made a noise deep in his throat when their lips met. Rhys’ lips were softer than Jack’s-- a bit more plush- his kiss not nearly as aggressive, but that was okay. Kissing Rhys was very good, too, and the sweet little noises he made during the fact? Even better.

Tim wasn’t positive whose hands had exactly started it all, but suddenly there was a lot of groping; big, familiar hands and warm, cybernetic ones on his body and under his clothes. The three resituated a bit, and shirts and pants were lost in the effort. Tim faced Jack, on his knees as he more or less sat on the older man’s thighs to embrace him _and_ Rhys who was behind the older man. Tim was kissing up Jack’s neck and jaw on one side, Rhys lavishing the same affection on the other as Jack groaned between them in appreciation. With Tim’s legs over his thighs, and Rhys’ on either side of them, Jack was trapped, and he loved it.

“ _Fffuck_ ,” Jack cursed, throwing his head back and onto Rhys’ shoulder, breath heavy and eyes closed in ecstasy as Tim pulled back to see what had gotten that reaction. Rhys had a hand down Jack’s Hyperion-yellow underwear, removing the CEO’s cock and thumbing at the underside of the leaking head. 

The sight got a moan from Tim as well, and he pressed forward, leaving Rhys to it for the moment as he captured Jack’s lips with his own once again. The noises coming from the older man reverberated in Tim’s own mouth, making his cock flex and jump in his own shorts as Jack moved his tongue against Tim’s own. Tim couldn’t take waiting any longer, and allowed his own hand to join Rhys’ sliding up and down Jack’s cock. It surprisingly enough got moans out of _both_ men, and Tim broke from Jack’s lips with a dirty little fun idea.

“Rhys,” Tim prompted, getting a dazed look from the PA as Rhys came close enough over Jack’s shoulders with every intent to kiss Tim. It wasn’t his immediate intention, but Tim kissed him just the same before retaking the idea that struck him, “You wanted to know if we were the _same_ ,” he said with a dirty little leer, eyes darting to Jack’s own to impart exactly what he meant. The CEO chuckled gruffly, his own cock flexing in their hands. Tim pressed a kiss to the side of Jack’s jaw as one of his hands dropped down to rub his thumb into Rhys’ hip behind Jack. “Take it out, _pumpkin_.”

The moan Tim got from _both_ of them at the way he delivered the request was satisfying. Rhys was living out every Handsome Jack-enthusiast’s fantasy, and Jack’s vanity being what it was, the older man turned _himself_ on. Literally. Both men were pretty easy to read in terms of what they wanted sexually, and Tim wanted them both enough to fully play it up. It was probably one of the most fun sexual encounters he’d had yet, to be perfectly honest.

Especially if it meant Rhys taking _Tim’s_ cock out of his shorts the same way he’d done for Jack, wringing a stuttered moan out of Tim that he muffled into Jack’s bare shoulder. 

“ _Oh geez that’s nice_ …” Tim muttered quickly, feeling Jack’s breathy chuckle at the juncture of his neck and shoulder before Jack pressed an open-mouthed kiss there. The nip he gave Tim’s skin made the double’s cock jump in Rhys’ hand, and he pulled away just slightly to watch between them what Rhys was doing.

So he and Jack _weren’t_ completely identical, not that Rhys seemed to mind _or_ care now that he had his hand halfway around both their cocks. Jack was thicker in a way that made Tim’s stomach fill with butterflies and want, anticipation for what taking that kind of girth might feel like. The head of his cock was just as thick as the rest of it, bulbous and dark with arousal and leaking enough to make the slide of Rhys’ hand over both of them feel like silk on velvet. 

Tim’s own cock had the slightest of curves, longer than Jack was but not by much. He’d never felt like it wasn’t enough, anyways, and with all Jack’s bitching years back about how _every_ part of them needed to be identical, he’d left _this_ alone. Tim thought it had been out of courtesy, but _now_ he thought otherwise.

“ _Fuck_ that’s good, Rhysie,” Jack praised, rolling his hips the best he could with Tim still sitting on his thighs. He turned his head to catch his PA’s lips, and could feel the way Rhys couldn’t help humping against his back where his own clothed cock was pressed against Jack’s back. The CEO tugged his pretty PA’s lip between his teeth before coming back to soothe over it with his tongue. He got a whimpered moan of pleasure for his efforts. “...how’s this for-- _ah hell yeah_... a one-of-a-kind experience, huh kitten?” Jack slightly teased, knowing how big a creepy-fanboy his exceptional PA had once been, and fully appreciating the way the younger man handled their cocks, “...getting to jerk off _two_ Handsome Jacks at once… _Oh fuck_ yes…” His voice got breathy with heated excitement, getting off on his own words as much as Rhys was. 

Rhys might’ve been a little embarrassed to essentially dry-hump his boss, pressing, rubbing, and thrusting his hips against Jack’s lower back again and again where the older man leaned against him. But all he could see was _Jack_ ; the one he was getting himself dangerously-close to coming against, and the one in the same man’s lap. He could feel the differences in cock size and length as his hand was wrapped around them, fingers not even close to touching around both cocks, but allowing for plenty of friction just the same. It was ridiculously hot, and he was scared with Jack’s dirty praise that he might end up coming before he got a chance to do much else.

But it wasn’t Jack he should’ve been worried about, rather, _Tim_ and his impeccable Jack-pression. It sent moans through both men as Tim spoke over Jack’s shoulder, voice smug and excited, thick with his own desire: “Who do you think will _come_ more all over that pretty hand of yours, _pumpkin_? Keep-- _oh fuck Rhys_ ….” 

Rhys’ grip on their cocks faltered some, and Rhys came unexpectedly in his shorts with a whine as he jerked hard against Jack’s back in surprise. He was pushing his cock in time against the CEO with the spurts of the hardest orgasm he’d had in a while. Each lurch his cock gave painted the inside of his underwear until Jack could probably feel the dampness against his back. Tim’s mischievous chuckles combined with Jack’s dirty praise was only icing on the cake, and it took a moment for Rhys to come down as he twitched behind the CEO.

“Did you come on my back, Rhysie? I don’t just let _anyone_ do that,” Jack teased with lusty amusement, “Or did you get it all in your shorts, baby? Didn’t even let Timmy here get his mouth on you...”

“ _Aw fuck yes_ , Jack,” Tim spoke as he ground his own hard cock against Jack’s, using the older man’s shoulders for leverage as he enjoyed his dirty words. It got Jack’s attention back on the man in his lap, anyways, and the CEO put both his hands on Tim’s hips to grind them against one another.

Jack pressed a kiss to Tim’s throat before pressing kisses all over that perfect face of his. It was… _strange_ fucking with his mask off, but the serum had worked so well, he didn’t feel weird about it. If anything, it was liberating in a way. He wasn’t hiding, and in that, he didn’t want to hold back.

“... _Fuck_ Timothy,” he started, their cocks half-out and the friction good but not quite enough, “I wanna fuck you so hard, gorgeous,” he spoke against Tim’s lips, the double whining as he kissed him hungrily before speaking up.

“Y-you can,” Tim sighed, hips lurching, “I’d love that, yes, you-- _aaah_ please Jack…”

“After. Later-” the older man clarified as Tim ground against him, feeling Rhys move a bit behind him as if he might be trying to give them room. 

Jack wanted to fuck _him_ too. Not right now, though. This would be the first of many rounds if he had anything to say about it. “I wanna come before that. It’ll take too long to prep that hot ass,” he said impatiently. “Got something just as good. Hands and knees, sweetheart. Put your thighs together.”

Tim ground against Jack a few more times before crawling off him, tossing his underwear aside as he watched Jack do the same, before getting on his hands and knees like he was told. Tim met Rhys’ eyes, fully aware of the way the PA was watching him with quickly-renewed hunger, and if Tim posed slightly-- knowing he must look a sight with his cock heavy between his legs, curving with want towards his stomach- then it only did him favors.

Jack was getting off on Rhys watching them get situated far more than he’d expected. He knew it was going to be hot, but the look in Rhys’ eyes, and the way the younger man’s cock quickly rallied between his legs… Jack knew what he wanted to see even after he got off. 

He bent himself over his double’s back, having grabbed lube off the night table and slicking up his cock, while Tim pushed his ass back towards Jack impatiently. “Keep your thighs together for me, sugar,” Jack instructed with lust-rich tone as he teased his slicked-cock below his double’s balls. 

Tim groaned at the first slicked-slide of Jack’s girth between his legs. His cock flexed and bounced up to touch his stomach, precome leaking steadily as the older man repeated the motion before he really got going. It was weird-- something he hadn’t experienced before- but he _liked_ it.

It was better than Tim thought it would be, and way hotter, besides. Every slide of the older man’s cock brushed up against the underside of his balls, and if he looked beneath himself, he could see every time Jack’s cockhead peeked out between the front of his thighs. Tim moaned hard when Jack reached beneath him to wrap his hand around the other man’s cock, the CEO bent in a way that allowed him to kiss and nip up the back of Tim’s skin, and also whisper dirty things into the double’s ears.

“Someone likes the show,” Jack said none too quietly, bringing Tim’s attention to where Rhys was watching them, his own hand jerking his cock in time with Jack’s thrusts. Tim could only moan out affirmatives as Jack jerked him and Rhys watched them, the double whining when Jack removed his hand to settle both at Tim’s hips. “ _A-almost there_ ,” Jack announced, his hips snapping against Tim’s own, the slap of his balls against the back of his thighs oddly funny _and_ erotic. “Gonna make such a mess-- _Aaahh fuck_ \-- you’re gonna be dirty for a _nmgh_ a week-- _oh fuck… oh fuck!”_

Tim not only heard, but felt when Jack came between his thighs, the slide wetter and with decidedly less-friction as it dripped down the front _and_ back of his legs. He made a noise of complaint at that-- especially when Jack stopped thrusting altogether and hadn’t even jerked him off. He made to reach for his cock -- he was so close- but Jack _stopped_ him from doing that too. 

“Dammit Jack what the--”

“ _Ah-ah_ , wait a sec there hot stuff,” Jack tutted, out of breath but clearly amused and content, giving him a slight smack to his ass that only made Tim’s cock jump in interest. He followed it up with caressing his palm from Tim’s ass up his lower back. He had no plans to leave the other man high and dry. “Rhysie, baby, c’mere a minute.”

Tim looked back at Rhys, dangerously close to coming and wanting to either sob or hit something if Jack wouldn’t so much as get him off. He wondered if he intended to have Rhys jerk him off (which he wasn’t opposed to at all, so long as _someone_ goddamn let him get off), when Jack was instructing his PA to get behind his double. Tim’s stomach dropped with excited anticipation as he understood what Jack meant to do, and he perked up a bit at the promise of renewed sensation.

“Let my pretty PA fuck those messy thighs, _Timothy_ ,” Jack whispered into his ear, something in his tone filthy beyond measure and _doing it_ for his double. “Let’s just see who has the bigger load, hm?”

“ _Fuck_. Yes, please, anything, _fuck_ Rhys just--” Tim’s voice let off in a groan as he felt the smooth, warmed metal of a cybernetic hand at his hip, another manipulating the PA’s cock into the hot, slick mess Jack had made of his shaking thighs. At the first slide of Rhys’ length against the underside of his balls, a dirty moan of pleasure left the double, and as Rhys bent over him to wrap his flesh hand around Tim’s cock, the double whined and pushed back against him, so, _so_ close still that it was almost cruel. As Rhys’ thumb swiped over his cockhead and the sensitive skin beneath, Tim cried out for more.

“You sound _so_ pretty when you beg,” Jack praised, kissing Tim’s shoulder opposite the side Rhys was pressing his own kisses to and testing his teeth on. Rhys’ murmur of agreement amidst his own moans-- which he muffled with Tim’s skin in his mouth- made Jack chuckle. “You have no idea how hot you two look right now. I mean, have I imagined it before? Hell, only like a million times. But this? _Fuck_ … I want him covered, princess, you hear me? Both of you come, _hard_.”

Something about the command to do so, or Jack’s voice, or just the feel as Rhys fucked the mess of his thighs _and_ jerked at Tim’s cock had them both going off relatively shortly after. The PA’s little groans and own attention to how he handled Tim, adjusting pressure and speed as Tim’s release covered his hand, was just a sight to behold. 

Tim’s thighs covered in the release of two men-- three if he counted himself- was something else altogether. 

Tim collapsed onto his forearm in the sheets while Rhys leaned over the broader man’s back to caress at his skin and hug him before ultimately letting go so they could move. Tim flopped over onto his back with a vapid sort of look that made Jack snort, and Tim pulled the CEO down to kiss him hard and properly before doing the same for his personal assistant.

“That… should not have been so good,” Tim said between satisfied breaths, feeling the mess below his waist and knowing he’d be disgusted in about ten minutes’ time, but for now, he reveled in it; the very proof of a _really_ good time had by all cooling on his thighs. His eyes darted to Rhys’ face as the cybernetic man leaned back in the pillows and chuckled.

“No, it was _perfect,_ ” Rhys disagreed, giving him a silly sort of grin, still high from coming twice. “I… Holy shit.”

Jack leaned over him to kiss him open-mouthed and hungry, and Rhys accepted it lazily, dragging his hand up and over Jack’s back to embrace him too before Jack sat back up. Tim groped for the man, and Jack reached out to snatch up his hand. He pressed his lips to Tim’s knuckles like Tim had done earlier to him, and it made a lovely little expression flit across the double’s face that had Jack’s pulse very-nearly speeding back up again. 

“I hope you two know that wasn’t _nearly_ enough,” Jack teased, looking between the satisfied expressions of two _very_ attractive men laying in his sheets and bathed in Elpis’ glow. 

“ _Obviously_ ,” Rhys agreed, looking between them both with an edge to his gaze that only made Jack laugh.

“You little shit, you come _twice_ and you’re still not satisfied?”

“I never said that,” Rhys purred, moving closer and pulling Jack down to the blankets between them to cuddle close in denial of the fact. “But there’s no such thing as _enough_ when it comes to both of you, okay?”

Tim snorted, but leaned over enough to gently press his lips to Jack’s cheek just aside the man’s scar. He could tell that it irked him by the way Jack went momentarily still, but it passed as soon as it had come, and the older man smiled at him. Tim’s gaze darted to Rhys with a bit of a playful laugh, and then back to Jack. “I _told_ you he was a creepy fanboy.”

“I resent that,” Rhys said with his own smirk, a sort of drowsy glaze to his eyes as the high of orgasm ebbed away into total relaxation. 

“A ton, apparently,” Tim further teased, avoiding the flesh hand Rhys groped over Jack in search of giving Tim comeuppance. 

Jack snatched the mischievous hand up off his chest, lightly biting one of Rhys’ fingers before letting his PA go. Rhys just chuckled and further cuddled up to the older man, watching Tim with a sort of fond look over Jack’s chest as his eyes felt heavy and his blinking subsided into dozing.

Tim knew the mess between his legs was getting tacky and gross as they lay there, but he still didn’t want to move yet. He was entertaining the idea of asking them to shower with him, but if Rhys was dozing, he didn’t want to entirely disturb that. 

He grabbed for Jack’s hand instead, holding it and stroking his thumb back and forth over the back of his palm. Jack watched the movement with a sort of smile as they lay there together in satisfied silence.

“...I _do_ wanna try more of that stuff on my face, see if it does anything else,” Jack imparted softly after a few moments as the three of them lay together there amongst blankets and soiled sheets. Tim gave a derisive snort at the idea, and Rhys only murmured sleepily, half-coherent. Jack looked at his dozing PA, and turned his gaze back on his double. “I’m telling ya now, just like you wanted, handsome.”

“Do it _after_ it’s been tested,” Tim insisted, flicking the CEO’s nipple with his finger in annoyance. It only made Jack chuckle and wrap his hand further around Tim’s own to halt further flicks. “I wasn’t joking before, Jack. Don’t scare me like that again.”

“Asshole.”

“ _What?_ ” Tim said, looking at him in annoyance as Jack just snorted in amusement.

“ _Asshole_ ,” he repeated. “I _know_ you wanna call me an asshole again. _Definitely_ sounded like that. Don’t deny it.” He grinned, the look of clear amusement enhanced without the mask. Jack was in an unreasonably good mood. It was… nice. Nostalgic. 

“It’s not easy being you,” Tim agreed, but he moved to kiss Jack’s lips, gratified when the older man opened his mouth to him. The slide of Jack’s tongue against his own, the way he sucked it into his mouth, made Tim’s spent-cock give a half-hearted lurch in response. 

“I think you’ve got the hang of it though, baby,” Jack said with a smirk once they broke. He let his gaze drop to where Rhys had just started to snore on his chest, and a wicked edge took his smirk. “We’ll see you fucking like me in no time, too. Got a willing volunteer to practice on right here.”

Tim snorted, though he was sure Rhys would be all-for the idea. “I can fuck just fine on my own, Jack,” he laughed. “But, if you wanted to _show me_ how it’s done, y’know, from _whatever_ position, I’m a quick study.”

Jack’s chuckles were such that it roused Rhys on his chest, the PA lazily smiling at both, aura insufferably smug as he looked back at them. 

Tim’s gaze bounced from the slender cybernetic man on Jack’s other side, to Jack’s own scarred, but still-handsome face smiling back at him. He sat up where he’d been laying, ignoring the tacky sensation between his thighs for now to instead focus on the present-future. “I’d still like to fuck both of you,” Tim began with an unrepetant smirk, about as unabashed as someone tacky with the come of other men could be, “or _be_ fucked by both of you. Or both,” he said with a smirk to the sly grin working its way across Jack’s face, and that penetrating-interest that took Rhys’ own gaze once more.

“I saw a film on the echonet once…” Rhys volunteered, his cock already plumping against Jack’s thigh, “and it _wasn’t_ one of your pornos, thank you very much,” he added in thought to being called a creepy fanboy earlier, “it was called _Lucky Pierre_ buuuut basically… Um, one of us is in the middle of the other two, uh, giving _and_ receiving,” he finished with a full-body blush that was making Jack’s own cock rally. “I’d um… If you’d like to try it, that could work…”

Tim’s mouth was slack with interest, and a wicked little sparkle took Jack’s right eye as he looked at his double, raising a scarred brow. The play of emotions on Jack’s naked face made a wash of arousal crash over the double, and he considered seriously Jack’s request-- or rather, _statement of intent_ \- to further try the serum they’d developed out of those samples he’d gotten. If it resulted in a confidence boost, and further, getting to see these stark emotions on Jack’s uncovered face, well, maybe it was worth trying again… _Under proper supervision_ , of course.

For now, he’d very much like to try Rhys’ idea-- hopefully playing the role of this ‘Pierre’ himself- and fucking Rhys at the same time Jack would fuck him.

He was getting hard at the idea, and the tackiness all over his thighs was the only thing stopping him from pursuing that very idea right then and there.

“A-after a shower,” Tim began with excitement, watching the way Jack’s own cock filled out across his thigh as the older man grinned. Rhys’ flesh hand was already inching towards it, and Tim wasn’t sure the tackiness bothering him would stop him if they started up again. Especially with the shit-eating grin Jack gave him as Rhys’ hand moved towards its prize. “Definitely, _definitely_ after a shower…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucky Pierre is the meat in the sandwich of a threeway basically LOLOL I vote we bring it back into popular vernacular! xD Please leave comments if you've got 'em! I pounded out this baby pretty freakin fast for the word count goddamn IM A MACHINE :D mweheheh And for all the unanswered questions I left in the story: Jack doesn't heal up completely (unless your headcanon says he did xD), the stuff in his mask _did_ die but they'll just slather on some new stuff for him to wear when out, and they get the happiest ending ever and Jack gets even _more_ insufferable since he thinks he's getting more and more attractive by the day with the little bits of healing the serum _does_ do haha! 
> 
> [my tumblr](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/) | [my fic masterlist archive](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/post/134979026515/a-ao3-fic-archive) | [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PurgeThatUrge)
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! ao3 FAQ: [Can I post comments anonymously, or if I don't have an Archive account? ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/comments-and-kudos?language_id=en#anoncomment)


End file.
